Nebulous Mooch

“Have you ever gotten an MRI before?” The only other person in the waiting room in a hospital wheelchair asked me. He wore a pair of large glasses. The left lens was frosted over like the glass to a shower door.

“No I haven’t,” I replied.

He leaned forward a bit and said, “It’s nothing really. It makes a lot of noise but all you have to do is close your eyes and pretend you’re somewhere else. That’s what I did.”

“Good idea,” I said.

“It works,” he leaned back in his wheelchair and crossed his hands in his lap.

The MRI section of the hospital was sterile and space-aged– so unlike the rest of the hospital I’d seen. Workers dressed in black and white went in and out a vacuumed sealed door plastered with red warning stickers. Across the top of the door was written, “Warning high powered magnet in use.” The other stickers had pictures of objects you couldn’t take into the room like a screw driver, fire extinguisher, joint replacements, and credit card. While I sat there wondering if I’ve had any joint replacements, shrapnel, or metal fragments in my eyes that I’ve forgotten about the waiting room cleaned out and I was alone.

The MRI person finally came into the waiting room and asked me a series of questions. She quickly ran down the list checking my answers off on a clipboard. “Have you had an operation in the past month?”

“Yes.”

“How long ago?”

“Yesterday.”

Apparently this was the wrong answer because she stopped reading and said, “Yesterday? Do you have staples?”

“I don’t know my incisions are still bandaged up, but I assume not.”

She disappeared into another room to call my doctor. In a few minutes she was back.

“You didn’t have an operation. You had laparoscopy.”

“It felt like an operation to me.”

“But it wasn’t.”

She then asked me if I had any metal on my clothes and if I was wearing any jewelery. When I said I was and slipped off my wedding ring she took a good look at it and then said I could leave it on, but I’d have to take off my glasses. I felt like she was thinking that looks like plastic to me you can leave it on.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes. Leave it on.”

An MRI is just like a techno dance party except there’s no one else there and you have to lay completely still. I tried closing my eyes and pretending I was somewhere else, but no matter how much I pretended I was still there. When it was finally over I felt like I deserved a treat, but there was no bowl of candy by the door. Instead of a lollipop I got a ride in my wheelchair through the hospital basic and back to my room.