Things I was scared of before having an MRI scan:
· Knives
· Needles
· Waking up as a Bulls fan
· Knives
Things I’m now scared of:
· MRI scans
Some pieces I write are simply as an outlet for my thoughts. This one is different; I am now writing to teach. If you have consistent headaches for a couple months; take panados and keep your trap shut!
I was getting along just fine -bar a series of headaches that were more annoying than a Radio Algoa advert break – until my doctor suggested I get X-Rays of my neck in light of significant stiffness since my long jog (“Knysna: I run this city”). As the gay radiologist from Port Alfred – wearing a scarf indoors is a dead giveaway mate – told me to tilt my head back while I was standing against some board for the X-Ray a wave of tiredness hit me before I blacked out –only girls and men who wear scarves indoors ‘faint’ – and found myself being helped onto a chair by the scarf-clad radiologist and another older female radiologist from Kenton who was chatting to me at the reception trying to get me to add her son as a Facebook friend because he was lonely in Kenton. Not the most manly moment of my life.
The result of my black-out was – beside a heavy bout of embarrassment – an appointment with a neurologist – an Afrikaans man whose lack of friendliness suggested he was still smarting from the Sharks’ 19 point drubbing of the Bulls the previous week. The single appointment ballooned into an EEG - (Electro, something I can’t remember or spell that starts with an ‘E’, Graph) where some lady rubbed aqueous cream all over my face like a dry-skinned black man in winter before sticking a host of electrodes on my skull leaving me looking like a science experiment –, a blood test – recall my fear of needles -, and an MRI scan.
Now, in my mind, an MRI scan entailed lying on a bed that moves in and out of a massive metal donut type thing so that machines can take 3-D pictures of the inside of my head, not unlike technology standard to a CSI episode that ends in an annoying ginger with a weird voice putting sunglasses on inside a caravan.
When I walked into the room my first suspicion was confirmed: It was a massive metal donut type thing, though the hole in the middle where the human was inserted was smaller than I initially imagined. The scan itself, however, did not go nearly as I expected.
As I sat on the table in preparation for my scan, I was told that the process would last 45 minutes and that I’d be on a drip that would be laced with ink halfway through to make my veins stick out - weird, I thought, but chilled. I lay down and got a pair of ear plugs thrust into my ears to protect me from the noise I was warned the machine would make. Little pillows were then stuffed either side of my head to further protect me from the noise – a lie – and to keep my head still – dead still. As I was electronically thrust, head first, into the massive machine donut the ladies in charge told me to keep my eyes closed for the duration of the scan. I was told the same thing for my EEG, which lasted 20 minutes, and during which I managed to doze off so I expected much of the same. My inquisitiveness took over as soon as the bed stopped inside the machine and I opened my eyes. I shut them immediately as I realised that the reason the nurses tell patients to keep their eyes closed is not for the purposes of the scan but to keep the patients from realising that they are tightly enclosed in a small bubble. I instantly regained my forgotten fear of small spaces. Thanks largely due to ‘The Postbox’ tunnel at Cango Caves and trips to Tin Roof in the boot of a car I have learnt that I am not the biggest fan of being buried alive, something I tend to forget when asked to list my fears. As my body started breaking out in a panicked sweat I was on the verge of kicking out in a desperate attempt to escape my premature burial. I realised then that I’d have to suck it up because I had no doubt that it was the only way to get rid of my damn headaches and that my Dad would never let me forget the fact that he’d managed an MRI scan just fine and I hadn’t!
The sounds kicked in just in time. I managed to get through the first 5 to 10 minutes of the scan by thinking of ways to describe the sounds in an article – hence me wasting no time in whipping out my laptop on the way home to get cracking on this piece! The sounds were repetitive in a sense, but also varied. My favourite combination made me thing of a very cheeky child playing a brave game of tok-tokkie with a combination of door bells buzzing loudly and incessant wood-on-wood knocking. Along with this was a sound not dissimilar to a razor and other sounds that made me feel like a hobo trying to catch 40 winks on a massive construction site – probably in the underground bunker of Julius Malema’s new 16 mil mansion.
The sounds kept my mind busy and, on one beautiful occasion, put me to sleep. My short slumber was rudely interrupted with a little snore but it was enough to allow me to fool myself into thinking I was almost finished. As I lay in the chamber with my eyes tightly shut I fought the urge to lift my legs. Part of me wanted to know if it was only my head and not my whole body that was enclosed while the other part knew full well that I’d have a comprehensive panic attack if that were actually the case. Every time the platform on which I lay moved I prayed to the Gods of medicine that I was being moved out of my giant metal donut grave, only to open my eyes and realise I was still inside.
Then it came. The bed moved more than it had on its 3 or so previous movements. I opened my eyes to the well-lit white ceiling of the room. My muscles relaxed. The sweating stopped. Angels were singing a Justin Bieber song. My nurse had somehow transformed into Scarlett Johannson. The needle that had been stuck into my arm for the past 40 minutes was far from my mind. Being a Bulls fan was almost comprehensible - almost. My fear of butter knives subsided. The world was a different place. The world was a better place. I had made it!
Now for another life lesson or two:
If you are a nurse or a radiologist; instead of asking whether I’ve had an operation in the last year or if I take any medication often, maybe make a small enquiry as to my fondness for small enclosures. At the very least, a mild warning would have been nice. On top of that, if you had half an entrepreneurial mind, you would offer to add some sedatives to the drip for a small fee and sell T-shirts saying “I survived an MRI”.
If you are for any reason contemplating an MRI scan, before you take the slow plunge; take a heavy dose of sedatives, get some good songs in your head, psyche up your imagination, keep your eyes tightly shut and brace yourself for a shitty experience.
Therefore, in a conclusion that will shatter any made by Einstein or Hawking before me: If you want to rid yourself of any phobia you find yourself stuck with, get a new one! Have an MRI scan.
