Tube thinking
Why Star Wars is better than NPR in the MRI machine
Good people. I just finished yet another MRI, and it was my best one yet. In 14 years of being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis I’ve had maybe… 8? MRI’s, notably the 4-hour one that inspired my first post here almost exactly a year ago.
I get them about once a year when I have decent health insurance/healthcare. They’re used to monitor how much my immune system has attacked my brain and spinal tissue, which indicates disease progression. When I first started getting MRI’s they were louder seeming, longer seeming, and felt so deeply stressful for many reasons. This is a listicle Substack, so here’s some reasons:
Genderqueer/trans spectrum in medical facilities (14 years ago!) = constant stress. Names! Touching! Gendered words & spaces! Gowns! How they treat me!
$ - in the early days I had to apply for refunding support for my meds and be in medical debt for years after every procedure. Fuck. That.
Laying in a loud tube processing all the fears of having MS in my mid twenties and what that meant for my life. With no distractions of phones or deadlines, being told not to move as a jackhammer seems to pound inches from your head. People.
Over the years I’ve had some MRI’s that I cried through much of. After a many-year gap when I stopped addressing my MS with meds or monitoring, I returned to have an MRI while in a flareup and still deeply on edge after a transphobic ICU nurse during my birth. This was pre-covid and my sweetheart came and sat at my feet and held my legs (yes, she’s the best).
To be in the tube is to be alone with the uncertainty of my body. It is also to be alone with the uncertainty of how our ableist world will respond to the changing abilities of my body. It’s not chill, but it does require me to be right there in it. Because my disability is usually not visible, because I still mostly am able to participate in most mainstream areas of public life - like workplaces and transportation - this tube-thinking is a byproduct of privilege, and I know it.
Today, my MRI was great as an MRI can be. Here’s some things that make an MRI great rather than a tube of tears:
Tech greeted me, then asked which gendered room I preferred to change in. Okay, Boston. Continue.
Tech told me the steps of what would happen- change, phlebotomy, wait, room. Okay, informed consent. Into it.
They had someone put my IV line in before I am strapped to a table and cannot see.
Two younger people were my MRI techs and they were kind (often the techs are gruff, I have to ask for all the info, and sometimes I don’t get what I ask for- like a let bolster or extra blanket).
They offered headsets and what kind of music I wanted. I have asked for this every time, and only received it onece. The other times they have acted as if y request was ridiculous- but I had heard it! It’s a thing! And it makes it more tolerable.
Music > NPR. The one time I had earphones, I was like “throw on NPR” I thought I’d just zone out listening to stories and WHEW listening to reports of bombings and other human suffering while in the jackhammer tube is no good. I asked for classical this time, not wanting words, imagining some YoYo Ma floating my way. And… I was accompanied by the Star Wars theme song and William Tell Overture. So, empire was still very present. But still, much improved.
1 hr > 4 hrs!
TINY MIRROR in front of my face that reflected so I could see my feet and the room. HELLO! Why did it take you 14 Yrs to get to that?
The obvious biggest pluses (that have not yet been mentioned): good health insurance! Not being actually sick and grieving in the tube! A feeling of agency and acceptance about my life with this disease almost a decade and a half on.
I continue to draw from the amazing listicle of things to think of generated by my friends a year ago. I also sent a wee blessing to everyone whose faces I saw in the waiting room, every worker whose face I could remember.
Here’s my post-pic in the hospital bathroom. I’m growing out my hairs and it’s in an awkward phase and it is what it is.
Love to y’all and PS when writing this I’m writing it imagining some newly diagnosed person, stressed and anxious about their upcoming MRI. If that’s you- hello! You’ve got this. It’s true, whatever was will no longer be. To be abled is a temporary reality, a powerfully divisive myth and organizing principle of our society that doles out belonging and survival. Resist that shit/study up on the disabled, Black/brown/queer/working-class/poor people legacy of resisting that shit. Love yourself and your people and love strangers like the golden rule. The MRI will be loud. They put something right over your face. It’s a lot, sensorily. Eat something decadent afterward and watch trash TV or whatever it is that soothes you. Imagine the flowers as they dry dew slowly from their petals in the sun.
Until my next hospital visit, which apparently is when I am unplugged from demands of life and work and moved to write.
<3
-g