MRI

I felt oppressed, like something was pressing down on my chest and I could not breathe. I closed my eyes and opened my eyes. There was a mirror intches away from my eyes, I could see the depths of my pupils, and my forehead, and strands of hair. I closed my eyes again. I felt a bit of moisture in my eyes as I kept them shut..

The whirring sounds began. Loud. Metallic. Unpleasant. 

The technician put in over the ear headphones that pretty much fixed my head into position on the head rest before the machine slid me into the MRI machine. The ceiling of the room were panels of blue sky and clouds. As the platform I was lying on slid into the MRI machine, the blue sky disappeared, and I was in this white, brightly lit cavern. 

The radio started playing. She asked if I just wanted to listen to the machine, and initially I thought to myself why anyone would want to do that. But while in it, I did wonder perhaps it would be more meditative to just meditate to the sound of the MRI whirring, clanking and banging instead of pop music interrupted by the occasional radio DJ introducing the songs. 

I had been feeling anxious before. Weeks have gone by since I've experienced head aches, particularly bad on my right temple. I first noticed them in March, but it went away. Then it came back in July or so, when I was in close contact with someone I learned caught covid, even though I never developed full on covid (tested numerous times). We're the headaches a symptom of covid or something else?

 The headaches really affect my ability to think or focus, and makes me cranky sometimes. It really has been bothering me, and worrying me. So I took up the therapist's advice and got seen by the doctor, who suggested I do a brain MRI.  Just to rule out anything nasty or severe. Like a tumour. 

The machine continued whirring. It would stop and everything would go silent for a bit until another sound, each time different, would start. I just imagined that the magnetic coils or whatnot is spinning rapidly and making that intense sound. It was terrifying at times, and I felt I could not breathe. I had rested my arms on the platform that I was asked to lie on, and suddenly, out of nowhere I felt such discomfort on the joints area that was touching the platform. I just felt such discomfort and unease. Nauseated even.

As soon as the platform entered the cavern with me lying there, I could not help but think of my dear, brave mother. I could not but see images of being with her at the hospital, doing all those scans with her (...how many did she have to do on her own?) all those years ago.12 plus years to be exact. 

I thought doing the MRI would affect me. But I had no idea it would affect me so badly. I just feel utterly exhausted from the experience.

What went through her mind when she did it all those years ago? Was I there to comfort her, to hold her hand afterwards? What did I say to her after each visit? Did I treat her to something nice so she could forget the ordeal? How did she feel?

The tears wallowed in my eyes. I held them back, but I could feel them. The loud sound of the machine triggered something deep , deep inside I did not realise was there. Just beneath the surface. There is still a lot of painful , traumatic, unpleasant memories that I did not realise were still so raw underneath my smiles.

Mum is of course long long gone, she suffers no more. Her own memories of the ordeals she underwent are nothing more in this universe. She has transcended all that, all the suffering, the noise, the terrors of MRI scans.

But I got up and left the hospital shattered. Feeling like I had seen a ghost. Ghost of the past. 

The magpie crossed my path, and our eyes just locked. It started at me for several moments, for what seemed like eternity. Were it not for the lady behind me approaching, I think we would have just stayed staring.

It cocked it's head sideways. Its red eyes sharp and judgmental as it stated at me intensely, as if asking me "why are you sad?"

Why am I sad?