Dateline September 16, 2023: As I pulled into the parking lot at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover this morning, all set, God Help Me, for another terrifying MRI—my pancreas was calling—my knees were mildly knocking. Given how terrified I was at my first MRI, many years ago. I was surprised at how gently they clacked together, like a pair of castanets in an underwater, Latin-American jam session. I’ll get through this, I chanted to myself.
Since my first MRI experience, I’ve been immovably determined never to enter that high-tech, mega-claustrophobic, anus-like apparatus again, convinced it was certain to malfunction, guaranteeing that I’d never be pooped back out into the real world again.
But I’ve never been one to fail to show up at a scheduled event, so on I went. Two lovely young women, Nicole and Shaunna, came down to the lobby and escorted me into the Waiting Room. I was to lock myself inside, rid myself of every conceivable metal object (including my hearing aids, wristwatch, and any dangling, heavy-metal fillings), then strip down to my socks and boxers, come down to Headquarters, and prepare for the launching.
All alone in that changing room, I suddenly lost whatever courage I’d managed to muster in advance of the procedure. How stupid of me
to actually think I was going on what would surely be a harmless, abundantly joyful “adventure!”
With the ugly truth suddenly down into the very marrow of my sorry self, I was scared shitless.
Now in an emotional and physiological tailspin, I called up every possible resource for survival, then prepared to report for duty.
I’ve always been a hidebound skeptic, proud as punch of my inherent distrust for authority figures, not to mention anyone and anything whose performance I can’t be proven to be 101% reliable.
But when the two Ladies of the Laboratory brought me to the launch pad, I was at first shocked and then absolutely ecstatic about what I saw standing there, monumentally grand, in front of me.
The thing was Art Deco elegant, sparkling like the Hope Diamond from all of its innumerable facets, and more streamlined than a Concorde Jet just off the assembly line. And inside, to my everlasting pleasure, it appeared to be at least a dozen times more technologically sophisticated than the stripped-down, morbidly under-designed tin can I’d been indignantly stuffed into those many years ago.
And it was beautiful—an absolute miracle of high-tech, human-centered, health-enhancing design!
Tucked meticulously in now, like an ancient, bearded babe in his bassinet, surrounded with a soothing blend of pastel, intergalactic colors, I could see what a luxurious, ground-tethered spacecraft I’d just been granted the privilege of traveling in. Directly in front of me was a small, panoramic movie screen, showing soothing images of koala bears tumbling playfully around in tropical grass; birds flying in tight formation across an azure blue, summertime sky; and fluffy white puffs of cloud matter dancing merrily above the horizon.
And all of this splendor staged to the tune of an endless flow of tranquillizing, sugar-sweet jazz music! (Or, I need to mention, the music of your choice from several other available genres at WDH.)
If for any reason I might suddenly, desperately have needed to be ejected from the contraption in mid-flight, all I would have needed to do was squeeze a buzzer cradled in my right hand. But I didn’t have to squeeze it because, quite honestly, I was too enthralled—I was having too much fun thinking of the wonders of constantly evolving, ever more compassionate technological advances—to want to bail out of that beast.
Just 35 minutes—and hundreds, I was told, of snapshots of my less-than Hollywood-bound innards—had been recorded, and I was released from the vehicle as easily as one might imagine a pain-free, complication-free childbirth to be.
So to the readers of this commentary, I say, “Don’t waste your time worrying about what an MRI might be like! It is nothing like it was just ten or twenty years ago, and it will no doubt only get better!
Buy the way, I went into that “tube”—not really a tube at all—without any nerve-calming medicines, even though they were readily available to me, ahead of time, with the blessing of my personal physician. And now here I am, safely at home, chilling out sans MRI and preparing to watch a movie while nestled into the comfort of my beloved piano/computer room.
You may think it impossible—I know I did—but I actually had a good time! The procedure was exceedingly well-administered—thank you thank you thank you, Shaunna and Nicole, for your caring support and high-level professionalism—and all I need to do now is to hope the results of my Inside-the-Body experience will be as positive as Doin’ the MRI at Wentworth Douglass was. And what a dance it was, too!
—Ross Alan Bachelder
www.artsaplenty.me
artsmultiple@gmail.com