Claustrophobia and MRIs are not a match made in heaven
On March 22, I had an MRI.
Now, I am disgustingly claustrophobic. I have to avoid watching crime dramas, because if I see a character locked in a closet/trunk/room with — and I’m sweating just typing this — his mouth taped shut or her hands tied, I will have a continuous, low-grade panic attack for the next eight to 12 months.
I tolerate elevators. I get woozy just looking at the middle backseat of a car. Crawl spaces are out of the question.
That said: I’ve been forced to have MRIs in the past because of this little scamp in my spinal cord known as a “thoracic syrinx” (mid-back mystery sac). Each scan lasted 35 to 45 minutes. And I survived. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t thriving in there; I was deep breathing, envisioning a meadow, relaxing my jaw, wondering what all the fuss was about, imagining being buried alive, hyperventilating, bracing for myocardial infarction, regaining control of my breathing, quietly sobbing, returning to the meadow, etc. Surviving.
But this time, I was told, the procedure would be much longer, imaging my brain as well as my entire spinal column with and without contrast dye.
Doctor: “You might want to consider taking something to relax you for this one.”
Me: “As debilitating as my claustrophobia is, I simply don’t have time to just be stoned all day. Not since undergrad, am I right?”. Doctor: “...”
Me: “Seriously, though, I have to get to work. I have to pick up the kids after school. I have to walk the dog. I’ll just have to breathe through it.”
Doctor: “...Just something to consider.”
Me (swallowing sawdust): “It’ll be fine.”
How long could they really leave me in there anyway?
I arrived on time, 8 a.m. Having assumed I’d be in there an hour and a half, max, I didn’t bother with breakfast.
I slipped into the baggy scrubs I was given and, with feigned confidence, entered the room behind the giant, vacuum-sealed door.
“I have to admit,” I began, shakily, with the over-acted swagger of a 19-year-old freshman who’s secretly battling a vicious UTI, “I am claustrophobic,” (I really emphasized the “am,” as if I was surprising them; as if they never would have thought a strutting stallion in scrubs like me could be anything short of mentally stalwart). "But I’m just going to breathe through it.”
Their silence told me they were impressed.
I was on the table for about 30 seconds when the lovely tech gently but firmly locked a cage over my face. That’s right: I would be requiring a face cage.
“Take it off, take it off, take it off!” I yelled, flapping my arms helpfully. The tech advised me that this hellish skull-prison (I’m paraphrasing) would be a necessary addition to the procedure.
My every orifice puckered. I hadn’t prepared for this. This was not something my fledgling meditation efforts (for five minutes thrice weekly) could tackle.
With the click-click of that goalie mask, my spirit had been broken. And now I had to summon the wherewithal to allow it again, before carrying on with the original living nightmare.
Silent tears flowed down my temples, clogging my ears. I closed my eyes.
Click-click. This is how I die.
I breathed my way through some vast expanse of time despite the 0.01 per cent oxygen in my airspace (shout-out to the COVID mask I was also wearing!). And I successfully willed my body and its internal tempest of cortisol to settle. I even started to drift off a little…
“OK, Heather?” came a voice through some nearby speaker. “We’re going to have to re-do the last little bit because it seems like you keep jumping. Maybe you’re falling asleep and your body is twitching?”
My mind was a war zone of extremes: para ly zing claustrophobia versus n arc olepsy induced tremors that will prolong this agony.
So I did the unthinkable; it was the only way to stay conscious.
I opened my eyes. Through the spaces in my
Hannibal Lecter headpiece, I could see the roof of the torture chamber, mere inches from my face. This was what I stared at for the remaining hours — save the time I was momentarily ejected from Satan’s birth canal so my puckered, hypoglycemic veins could be injected with dye.
After about two hours of complete immobility, I allowed myself to settle into the knife that had found its way into my left SI joint. It remained there — even twisting occasionally — for the final hour. The longest hour of my life.
Three hours total. Three. Godless. Hours.
By the time I heard the words, “you’re all done,” I couldn’t tell if I was awake or dreaming, alive or dead. I was too broken to rejoice properly. Too sore. Too hangry.
“Thanks, guys,” I smiled at the techs on the way out. “Sorry that was so difficult.”
Dishevelled, but dignity in check, I strolled back to my locker. Where the first wave of nausea hit me.
I pressed my head against the cold locker door. I could see patients in the waiting area to the right, so I ducked into a small change room. A great surge of sickening lightheadedness washed over me. I collapsed onto the wooden bench and plummeted my head between my knees, hoping to keep some blood in my traumatized brain. But I was too late.
I staggered, hinged forward at a 90-degree angle, back into the MRI area, and flapped a numb, limp wristed hand at the vacuum-sealed door. Somehow they heard me.
I recall the door opening. I recall seeing feet emerge. And I recall slurring “OINGERFEINNNN” (I’m going to faint) before charging, headlong, into an unlocked stretcher across the room.
That’s the last thing I remember. Before the distant, echoey voices began.
“She’s in ‘er boots!” I heard one exclaim.
I later discovered this was regarding my blood pressure, which was that of an end-oflife tortoise.
There were cold towels on my neck, which helped temper the waves of nausea.
“ARNEEZHUUUSH” (I need juice), I managed to dryheave at the team of faceless superstars tending to me.
I lost consciousness again and was revived by a blessed angel holding a straw to my parched mouth. That cold, one-litre tetra pack of apple juice from concentrate was my desert oasis. The sweetest nurse even gave me her gluten-free granola bar. It was the best thing I’d ever tasted.
The fog slowly faded. I lay for the next 20 minutes, looking not unlike a reanimated corpse wearing a freshly home-dyed black hairpiece.
I survived to laugh about it. And to get that phone call from the neurosurgeon a few days later, telling me my scan came back clear.