MRI

My friend blames my Columbian dance instructor in the fitness DVD, Ma blames the hours hunched in front of the computer while I take turns in blaming my "naseeb" and MCD for the pain in my back. My orthopedist grimly asked me why I was ignoring his repeated requests for a MRI.

In my worst moments of claustrophobia my behavior would knock Scarlett O Hara over as I swoon in the darkened auspices of lifts which grind to a halt during power failure. Even the gods cannot protect any gloomy zealot who at such junctures prophesies the worst for I would make Mathilda’s school principal look like a timid mouse. I marvel at people who pay money to climb up stairs located between the upper and lower domes of cathedrals and wriggle on their bellies to go through a cave to reach the Vaishnav Devi mandir. Ever since a friend mentioned in conversation that he thought the pyramids in Egypt should have ventilation in its inner sanctums I have dreaded visiting the venue. When I visit the Vatican and gaze at Michelangelo’s frescoes, the dizziness I feel with the heat and the crowds is often mistaken as a profound spiritual experience.

To ask me to spend good money and crawl into the tiny aperture of a MRI machine is therefore an act of sadism. To expect to leave a claustrophobic’s survival tools such as the mobile phone and IPod in a locker during the episode is cruel. To add to my misery I have witnessed someone dear to me being stuck inside a MRI machine for an hour due to power failure. The logical part of my brain however decides that this is ridiculous behavior and I dial the radiologist. I ask about duration of the procedure, size of aperture and cavity, distance of machine to face, if one’s position could be reversed with the feet entering the machine first, if one could lie on one’s belly, why does the machine make such a lot of noise and sadly the result of my study is not a very happy one. The radiologist says he can give me anesthesia to put me to sleep and the orthopedist says he can stay inside the room to give me moral courage.

I have decided that my errant vertebra will soon get frustrated with its Attention Deficiency Syndrome (ADS) and realize it will have to settle down with its brethren in the line set down by creation for in its battle with the non logical paranoid section of my brain, there is no way it can possibly win.