Discomfort

I wholeheartedly raise my hands in gratitude and appreciation to the inventor of the MRI scanner… but man do I hate that machine. Always in the cold basement of the hospital after hours, I seem to get lost every time in the eerie corridors even though I’ve been there so many times already. It’s a mental process to get there without allowing the deep discomfort tip me over the edge into an anxious hyperventilation.

Before each appointment, they ask you to note on your form whether you are claustrophobic, in case you need to be sedated. For my first MRI that I got during my preliminary testing, I checked off ‘mild’ I think more so out of pride/fear of being a nuisance as opposed to being totally honest… but I also had never spent much of my life in coffins so I admittedly didn’t have much experience being in an incredibly confined space where you can’t move or swallow. After doing my first MRI I started to think that maybe I actually was a little claustrophobic… not that it made me change how I fill out my forms.

The regular cadence of my MRIs is once a year, around December or January, though since my recent scan showed a new lesion, I asked if I could have an extra one this year (something that I know will be nice to have but I also instantly regretted asking for it once it was agreed to). Sometimes I feel like a wuss, like, it’s only once a year that you spend 75 minutes laying tense in a drafty tube, its ceiling two inches from your face, your head also secured in a cage, with what feels like giant subwoofers blasting construction noise into your ears while your head and neck get hot from the radio waves… that should be easy, no? But it is what it is, it’s uncomfortable for me and, like getting treatment and managing symptoms, it’s just another discomfort I navigate. And it’s not the last discomfort that I’ll face as I move through my life.

For me, preparation for an MRI starts a week before it actually happens. There’s triple checking that my health card is still in the same place it always is, marking in my calendar when I need to get my nose ring taken out, and doing laundry to make sure the cozy sweater I always wear to medical-related things is washed and ready. I plan what I’ll eat beforehand, picking something light and easy to digest (nothing worse than acid reflux when you’re trying not to swallow for 12 minutes, 7 minutes, 4 minutes during the cervical imaging). The day before, I start envisioning the next day after my MRI, beginning the reminder that this will be over eventually, something I continue to repeat to myself into the hours before and minutes during. When I arrive in the basement, I change into the colour-coordinated pajamas and go to the washroom, snapping a playful, head-to-toe selfie in the mirror to send to my fiancé, keeping it light with “MRI chic”. I picture him in the car after dropping me off, driving to a nearby bar to grab a beer and do some work while he waits for me. He’s existing outside of this experience, and he’ll be there when I get out. I visualize the moments after getting out of the machine, relief that it’s over, pride that I made it through one more time, putting my clothes back on, texting my fiancé “done!”. To get to that moment, I just have to get through this small detour.

I enter the room, averting my eyes from the small cavity where my body is somehow supposed to fit. I pop the earplugs in (way in, they apparently have to touch brain to be effective), and close my eyes once my head hits the table. I feel the cage hover over my head, I take a deep breath, and the table begins to slide in. The blanket over my lap catches on the sides of the MRI, each tug communicating to me that I’m now in the machine. Everything I prepped seems to fade as I squeeze my eyes as tight as they can go. I focus on my deep breaths but that actually makes my heart rate go faster. The sounds start, the machine begins to shake, and I find myself grasping for the visual, the after. My heart rate picks up, vibrating in my chest so rapidly that I debate for a moment squeezing the emergency button that they placed in my hands, telling myself I always have the option to stop… but then I battle with the reminder that, regardless, I will have to go back in and finish this. It’s better to ride it out. I think of my heart and focus on how to calm it, how I can be there for it. I focus on breathing normal, not deep, not over the top, just simple – because this is simple, easy peasy, no biggy, remember? It starts to work, I start to settle, and then there are my thoughts, there’s my voice, coming through the cloud of panic, coming to comfort me. I find my visual, what I’m looking forward to after this, and I hold onto it. Life outside of the MRI, life outside of this uncomfortable moment, continues. 

And that’s how I try to approach discomfort now. Life outside of all my discomfort – MS, treatment, needles, appointments, symptoms, talking about my diagnosis, feeling lonely, feeling anxious, you name it – it always continues. As quickly as discomfort arises, it will also dissipate. It comes and goes. You will always arrive on the other side of it. You just have to ride this wave.