My brain name-dropped the Wizard of Oz yesterday while I was recovering from a second attempt at completing an MRI. The first had been interrupted—by me shouting—as the tiny hairs on the tip of my nose brushed against the top of the tiny tube.
“No-no-no-no-no…!”
I banged against the side of the tube in case the Wicked Witch of the West (the technician) had missed my shouts. They were not wearing the uniform of the villain mentioned; the witch in this film noir wore scrubs.
Film Noir: a style or genre of cinematographic film marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, and menace. Oxford Dictionary, 2023.
I've not encountered a less-humane medical individual, aside from the all-male crew “oohing and ahhing” over my moon-shaped body during a gynecological exam. I was participating in a research project relating to steroid use for people prone to miscarriages. My pregnant body had been considered “highly interesting” to research interns, and they forgot a human being was inside the form with its underwear parts out in the open. For those who’ve never been examined by a gynecologist, it would be like lying naked covered by a hand towel and your legs in the air, your bum manually probed, and being asked to cough in a room filled with people commenting on the size of the jiggling beer belly looming over your exposed underwear parts.
The MRI witch should have known better and likely did. Someone working alongside a tube the size of a woodchuck hole ought to have awareness of what it takes to endure forty minutes buried alive. The tech had talked faster than I did when, at sixteen, I tried to avoid my car privileges being taken away for having two parking lot accidents in four days. The witch rattled off metal object warnings and time elements and underlined the need to start all over if I moved a smidge. Gesturing to the cadaver slab, the witch mimed me climbing on it. Quickly complying, they proceeded to swaddle my arms and legs into a corpse pose. Without preamble, they shoved plugs into my ears, jammed on large headphones, and started the conveyor belt.
First, my nose, and then the hair on my forehead, announced the top of the tiny tube. I gasped.
“No-no-no-no-no…!”
Alerted by my shouts and banging, the witch retracted me from the tube. I leapt up, ripping headphones from my head, waylaid by the witch from heaving them across the tiny room. Panting with anxiety, my heart thrumming, and resolutely refusing a pressured suggestion to make a second attempt, the witch weirdly yelled exhuberantly to the person in the control booth.
“Another claustrophobic! Turn everything off!”
I surmise they may have been thrilled to have a forty-minute break.
After a hospital orderly walked my quivering body back to the lobby and said he’d pray for me, I spent the next several hours enduring an EKG, a chest X-ray, a blood draw, a urine sample, and had my t’s crossed and i’s dotted by a nurse practitioner. The NP cautioned me about my “undiagnosed and unmedicated” high blood pressure. My first thought was that either I had been hallucinating since ten in the morning or the staff of the hospital had been bitten by the mushroom people from The Last Of Us and if that was true, where the fuck was my Pedro Pasqual?
Turning down the efficient yet obtuse nurse practitioner’s offer of meds, I bitterly scrolled Amazon and ordered a blood pressure cuff to prove them wrong.
Two days later, I dragged myself through an “open” MRI test and learned that being sandwiched inside a panini grill isn’t much better than a woodchuck hole. This version was ninety minutes long. At an hour, contrast was added, and I was shaking almost to the point of convulsions. A Glenda the Good Witch technician gently placed blankets around me, accidentally knocking on the low ceiling of the panini grill, giving my sonar more information than it needed. The last half hour was hell. When the good witch announced there were only two more cycles, I thought, “Thank God, it’s nearly over.” Instead, with my nervous system on overload, the remaining twenty minutes felt longer than the previous hour. Not sure I’d make it, I resisted banging on the ceiling, knowing the test would need to be redone and guessing that touching the ceiling would make the sandwich feel more real. Miraculously, the Pedro Pasqual part of my brain rushed to inject memories of my recently passed dog Pi to distract me long enough to complete the test with tears dripping down my face.
That night, lying in bed, attempting to detox my aggravated body with gentle manual therapy techniques, The Wizard of Oz appeared in my mind. Specifically, the scene where Oz is hiding behind a curtain. Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Lion, and the Tin Man had gone to the wizard for help. After discovering he was not a wizard but only a man, they realized they had to rely on themselves to get what they needed. The concept expanded in my mind, gathering with it my “God” belief that related to Oz, in that I understood “God” as a benevolent presence that does not or cannot interfere. My hands and chest internally softened, and I prayed for the first time in decades. Which may seem like odd timing—more fully understanding “God” as not the one with the power to intercede—led me to pray to a “God” to support an ability to rely on myself.
A typical-me-rationale that might be of little logical sense to others.
Since the initial wonky medical test in late December, I have wobbled on “the threshold of the unknowable future” (read about that HERE). The MRIs threw me off that arduously achieved and peaceful existence and into the ratchety state of fight-flight-freeze. Nothing existed except my entry into the woodchuck hole, lengthy time endured inside the panini grill, and the unknowable future. An unknowable future which might include a lifetime of blood pressure meds and absolutely would include a surgery encumbered by an open-ended outcome. My newly purchased blood pressure cuff related those elements with harsh numbers.
What I’m now able to say is that I am beginning to understand why people tend to gravitate toward the “unknowable spiritual realm” when the “unknowable future” sets off alarms. If breathwork, meditation, soothing music, and hiking doesn’t dial down alarm bells, and attempting to save edibles and Xanax for potential future monstrosities, reaching for prayer seems to be a practical option—even for a questioning and reluctant believer. For me, along with quick administration of EMDR therapy (eye movement, desensitization, and reprocessing) right after the MRI trauma, nothing else except prayer brought my anxiety down enough to achieve healthy and reliable blood pressure readings.
Praying led me to a sturdier foothold on the threshold of the unknowable future.
That first night after the second MRI, I prayed for the resilience of my body and my spirit, since my mind was freaking out. I prayed to the DNA that helped me survive to the age of sixty-two. I prayed to whatever exists that is unnamed and undefined. I prayed to my ancestors, especially my badass great-grandmother. I prayed to Pi.
A portion of me has been struggling under the burden of living with too damn much trauma. That portion needs my love and care, and at the end of the month, surgery. Test results and recent blood pressure readings have revealed that the rest of me is wildly healthy. Thank you, dear body, for your ability to hold space for my life.
On this threshold of the unknowable future, that is enough information. I’ll use what is available to hold reverence for my entire self and prepare for what arrives.
I’ll pray for the strength to maintain this place on the threshold. I’ll pray that the icy hearts of wicked witches melt. I’ll pray it’ll stop being necessary to be stuffed into a woodchuck hole or a panini grill because a future Glenda the Good Witch will invent a humane MRI. I’ll pray for everyone everywhere to recognize the tools we have in our common DNA. I’ll pray we each recognize the purity of moments on the threshold of the unknowable future. I’ll pray icy hearts melt enough to allow people to love their life more than they did the day before. And I’ll pray the melting of icy hearts brings a wave of peace like the kind that can be read in a blood pressure reading and seen on the face of a person who wants to live.