My Nightmare is an MRI

My Nightmare is an MRI 

I’m paralyzed, lying on a surgery table, my head resting on a meat slicer. Who uses a meat slicer for surgery? My teeth rattle, my skull vibrates. It's an earthquake, an apocalyptic firestorm, buzzing locusts burning inside my mouth. The surgeon cuts my head into deli-meat, holding up the slices of my brain to a camera.

A speaker nearby crackles to life: “Denied.”

My blood is cold as it drips down my neck. Earthquakes. Fire. Is the surgeon smiling as she forces the jagged spinning blade through me? Another slice for the camera.

“Denied.”

I wake up gasping, my body convulsing with terror. I take a breath; there’s a bed beneath me, now. My heart slows, my breathing returns to normal. Reality trickles back into my mind and I sigh. It’s time to go to the doctor again. 

My hip snaps and grinds. Every time I turn my head, I hear liquid sloshing through sand. It takes every ounce of willpower I have to dress, more to walk to the car. I'm exhausted by the time I’m buckled in. I arrive at the doctor forty-five minutes early.

I wait three hours to watch him shrug: “I’ll give you another round of physical therapy. There’s nothing wrong with you.” He stares at my shaking hands. “I’m not saying you’re lying, but you're fine. You walk. You move your head. That's all I need to see.” He motions toward the door. “I’ve got patients with real problems.”

How many times have I been dismissed? How many doctors? Do I care if I burn bridges anymore? Bridges to what? I don’t know what I do at this point. Maybe I lose it on him, scream, threaten, I’m not sure. Whatever I did, he’s staring at me now like I am the headlights of a car rushing toward him.  He looks so terrified at what this oncoming car might do to him, how severely it might change his life. 

His hands shake.

“I’ll put the order in for an EMG, it’ll be denied. If, by some miracle, they approve it, it’s going to come back fine. In any case, the lady who does the test travels the state. Between insurance and her schedule, it’ll be a few months.”

He says this as if it’s a reason to skip it. I tell him to try. Some time later I get a call: insurance has approved it. I expect to feel relief, but I don’t. What will I do if this is yet another test that “comes back normal” and proves “there’s nothing wrong with me” and my agony continues to worsen? How long can I really live like this?

The day of judgement comes. I enter a shabby room. The floor is dirty. I’m greeted by another medical professional with cold eyes. My heart thumps as I lie down.

She says: “You’ll feel some pricks as I place the testing leads, nothing serious.”

I nod. She places them while I stare at the ceiling. How long can I survive this pain?

“Do you feel that?” she asks.

I do a mental scan of my body. It’s hard to remember if she did anything at all. Is she trying to trick me? Is this one of those doctor ‘gotcha’ moments again?

I say: “I think so.”

Time passes.

“Something’s not right,” she says. “I need to restart this thing.”

She looks at the machine, then me, trying to reconcile the two. She restarts a second time. Finally, she looks at me—truly looks. No irritation, no impatience.

“What... happened to you?” she asks.

I’m tired of telling the same story so I give her the short version, ending with: “There’s more but...” and a shrug.

Another long pause.

She says: “If I had only seen these readings, I’d expect someone wheelchair-bound. How are you not screaming in agony right now?”

I look at her—truly look. Her eyes well with tears. She rests a hand on my shoulder.

She speaks softly: “I promise you: when they see these readings, they will listen. I’ll give you my number. If anyone gives you resistance, call me. I will handle it.”

I nod, feeling like my chest might burst.

“I mean it, things are going to be different now.”

The doctor orders the MRI.

More time passes, more time with the world feeling like fire poured into my veins. Tearing, ripping inside me, grinding lightning into my joints. How much longer?

I enter the facility for the MRI. A woman who never makes eye contact shoves clothes into my chest. She runs through everything so fast I have no idea if I'm following her instructions or not.

When did I stop being human to them? Thoughts of the nightmare return. I can almost feel the blood trickling down my neck, my teeth rattling as another question forms.

Was I ever?

“Lie down,” she says.

I get earplugs and a headset to block out the noise.

“It’ll be loud anyway,” she laughs as she stuffs some plastic boards alongside me. I lie on the bed and it slides into the tube of the MRI machine. Its walls press against my shoulders. She tells me not to move and so I pretend to be paralyzed. The machine starts. 

Cah-chunk, cah-chunk.

Beeeep, beep.

I have no intention of falling asleep and yet...

Scrape, scrape, buzz, buzz, slices of my brain.

Denied.

Denied.

“Ok, wake up,” the nurse startles me awake. “We’re behind. I’ve got five more after you—let’s get you out of here.”

I leave, then come back, then come back again. I keep forgetting things. The fuzz and haze in my mind, the haze that the doctors say doesn’t exist? It keeps getting worse. Part of me wonders if they’re right. It’s all in my head. Do I hope it is? Is that what I’m wishing for?

Weeks later, the doctor calls.

“Uh... we need to discuss your MRI.”

No three-hour wait this time: they rush me in.

“Are you sure you weren’t having problems before the car accident?”

Again, he accuses me. I wonder if killing him would be worth it at this point. Life already sucks, might as well bring some justice into it.

He hesitates, then changes direction.

“You might have...” he hesitates again.

After a year and three months of being accused of lying, even accused of attempted insurance fraud, I learn the truth. My spinal cord is so swollen, if I don’t have emergency surgery, I will be paralyzed from the neck down.

“I guess all those rounds of physical therapy actually made it worse,” he laughs.

I am not letting this moron touch me. I race against time to find a competent doctor, choosing one about two hours away. I explain it’s an emergency and they actually move my appointment up. On the day of the appointment, I am greeted by someone different. She does not look at me with the eyes of a scared mother like the EMG tech. She looks at me with curiosity, nothing more. She takes a moment to review my MRI, then reads the moron doctor’s plan.

She laughs, shakes her head: “That’s not how you fix this.”

She clears her schedule. Surgery comes fast. The anesthesia takes me. Everything goes black and it feels like death: kind, peaceful, loving. I wake up in recovery. She visits soon after. 

“I wish they’d done the MRI sooner. You have some major nerves that are damaged, strangled. I can’t promise they’ll recover, but I’m hopeful.”

I nod.

I dare push my luck: "My mind... has been slipping. My hip hurts so bad. No one listens. I promise you, something is wrong, it’s not in my head.”

She stops me as I struggle to over-explain the truth. She doesn’t hesitate to provide referrals. MRIs. No resistance. No fear of insurance. No dismissal. I’ve never seen anything like her. For the first time in my entire life: I finally met a competent doctor.

I want to jump up and hug her. I do the less weird thing and thank her, but somehow it’s still awkward. It’s not a big deal to her. She must do this every day. I smile and she smiles back. She leaves and I continue to marvel: to her, I’m a human being.

It washes over me in a way that may take a lifetime to explain, almost cosmic. The future holds more struggle, strife, and agony, but that’s not all it holds. My nightmare is an MRI, but that nightmare is beginning to fade.

To my surprise, I let myself dream of hope.