THE MRI MONSTER

by Mariane Holbrook

Me scared of an MRI? No problem! “Piece of cake,” I told my friends blithely.

I slept well the night before the test despite my friends’ phone calls, so
concerned were they about my raging claustrophobia and how it might manifest itself during an MRI. 

Remember, I’m the one who regularly walks 26 flights of stairs to avoid an 
elevator. I’m the gal who begged and sobbed to disembark a plane just before take-off because the two people on either side of me had morphed from ordinary men into a 450 lb. Suma wrestler on my left and a bearded 500 lb. Harley motorcyclist on my right. In unison, they’d conspiratorially sucked all the air out of the plane, resulting in my hyperventilating all over the place, in front of God and everybody.

But just to be on the safe side, on MRI Day I asked if John could go into the 
testing room at the hospital with me (a prescient request if ever I made one!)

Entering the stark room, I saw it. A behemoth monster. Not the standard, 
airless, dark MRI tunnel into which they slide you head-first, then lock and 
bolt you in, never to be heard from again while you scream and bang on the walls. 

This one was better designed to handle claustrophobics like me. It was 
called an "Open MRI." It turned out to be the largest hamburger press on the 
face of planet earth.

The top lid was about 10 feet in diameter, three feet thick, round and flat 
and imposing. I stared at that thing, then at John, then at the nurse, 
not comprehending. 

Were they kidding? They were planning to place my shivering, trembling self 
on the bottom layer of that hamburger press and do WHAT?

The nurse instructed me to lie on my back in the middle of this giant meat 
maker and keep my arms straight. I was not to move for exactly one hour and 
twenty minutes. She might as well have said 900 years and eight months.

I’d been instructed not to wear anything magnetic inside the MRI. I should have told them I had 3 metal dental implants, but I had just forked over $4500 for them and I didn’t want to go through the horror story of having them removed and re-implanted.

If, as they say, the MRI scanner is magnetized strong enough to suck up a refrigerator or a hospital gurney, imagine how easily it could suck those deeply planted metal thingys right smack outta my jaw! Would I swallow them in the process? I wonder what else would be pulled out in the process. My tongue? I prayed that tongue wasn’t “sharper than the two-edged sword” the Bible said it was. That suggests there’s a little metal alloy in there somewhere, doesn’t it? 

I knew my aching lower back desperately needed this procedure and it was now or never, so I bit some more flesh out of my bleeding lip, then asked the nurse if she could pipe in some of my favorite funeral music. I might as well kill two stones with one bird. Or whatever.

John whispered, "Whatever you do, don’t open your eyes."

I felt the huge, upper lid of the hamburger patty maker being electronically 
lowered toward my body. Naturally,I opened my eyes and stared in horror at 
the room-size, metal lid coming down to rest only an eighth of an inch above my 
nose. 

I waited for the suction to drain all the fluids from my sacrificial body, 
leaving only raw hamburger to be flattened into a round patty. I wondered at which Elks Club picnic I would be served.

In the distance I heard the nurse instruct, "Now remain perfectly still, 
relax and don’t talk." I noticed she didn’t mention screaming, but when I opened my mouth to scream, there was no room to move my lips. Besides that, my nose started to itch and there wasn’t even room to wrinkle it to reduce the itching.

First, she turned on the jackhammers. They banged on the giant metal hamburger press with staccato rhythm for 16 minutes. Then came the pile drivers and staple guns followed by the grinder which I endured for 28 minutes after which my ear drums were pierced. Then came the nail gun and the chain saw. They threw in a washing machine motor and a weed eater for good measure.

I could easily have been a winner on the TV show “Name That Tool.” 

My eyes glanced to the right, looking for levers marked “Up” and “Down.” I 
worried that when my time was up, the Up lever might jam and the“Down” lever would quickly flatten me into the largest pita pocket ever sold on Ebay.

I concentrated mightily on my funeral music, envisioning lettuce and tomato wreaths placed around my hamburger-shaped coffin by caring friends. 

I could see my obituary: "Death by Hamburger Press." I prayed it read, "thin sliced." 

I have my pride, you know.

Finally, I heard Nurse Ratched utter the magic words, "OK, you’re done!"

I slid out from the giant hamburger press, thanking God, my ancestors and 
Geraldo Rivera.

John looked at my chalky-white, scared-to-death face, then turned to the nurse and whispered, "Hold the fries.”