MRI
A few months after Cece was born, a depression developed in my upper thigh that looked like abnormal muscle or fat loss. My primary care physician referred me to an osteopath who ordered an MRI to rule out soft tissue cancer, which affects 3,000-4,000 people in this country every year. Last night, my big sister watched Cece while I went to the radiology clinic.
45 minutes, in most contexts, is not a long time. A 45-minute MRI, however, is interminable.
You are not allowed to move during MRIs, so my first thoughts centered around Cece as a newborn, helpless to move except for someone picking her up. I thought about Saint John Paul the Great, advocating love, compassion, and ethical treatment of those most helpless in our society–of those who need help with things like moving–of those whose brains and hearts and lungs are functioning, but who cannot move or eat or urinate by themselves.
What must it be like to be trapped in a brain that processes what’s happening around you, to be able to feel emotion and psychological pain, but be completely unable to express it?
The massive machine whirred and thudded and hummed around me. Tears coursed slowly down my cheekbones to my ears, gathering in small, salty pools around the foam earplugs that protected my hearing from the constant noise.
Is this what it all boils down to? 33+ years of life, all summed up in this one moment, as I stare, blinking slowly at the yellowed plastic inches from my nose. Is this itself something like death, where the utter loneliness of what is happening to you comes crushing in? If there is something happening inside of your body that you can’t prevent or undo or stop–but your brain still functions perfectly?
Unable to speak, unable to move, people die like this, alone and terrified.
Visions of Lizzy’s still, small body, and the multiple MRIs that were done on her at Children’s Hospital came coursing through. I thought of how at least she wasn’t alone for death, not when she was last conscious; I made sure to hold and kiss and stroke and talk to her, letting her know what was happening to her, reassuring her that everything was going to be okay, totally unaware of the lie I was telling her. And I was there, holding her broken little body, laying down next to her, telling her how much I loved her and how much she had defined my life, when they turned off the machine that was breathing for her and beating her heart. She was not alone when she died. No: Lizzy died in perfect trust, and that is part of why she is a saint.
But how many people die alone? And even if there are loved ones surrounding them, ultimately, what they are experiencing, they are experiencing alone.
In birth, we are not alone. Our mother is experiencing our birth with us, and she is inside of that experience fully and irrevocably. We come into this world fundamentally with another. And yet, when we die, we do so utterly without another. This, to me, seemed to be the strongest argument that death is ultimately disordered. That once upon a time, we were not born only to die.
“The next one is four minutes,” called a distant voice through a machine. I’m not sure if I was supposed to respond, but I didn’t. What did it matter? They are just doing their job, taking their magnetic pictures to determine if something is growing in my body that can kill me.
Images formed in my mind, playing before my eyes like a movie.
Cecilia laughing, reaching her little hands towards my face, palms to my cheeks, grasping my nose. Her excitement burbles through her, and she blows joyous raspberries.
Reading Good Night Moon to Lizzy as she sits next to me, pointing out the tiny white mouse on each page, whispering confidentially to me: “That’s a mouse . . .”
Cecilia below me as I stretch on our Winnie the Pooh blanket on the floor, pumping her right leg like Thumper, arching her back up and trying to roll over.
Lizzy, in my arms, overstimulated and exhausted at her 2nd birthday party, trying to settle down as we walk the flagstone path in the cool outdoor air, my shoeless feet making no noise.
Cecilia, bundled and nestled under blankets in her stroller–Lizzy’s stroller–her glasses slightly askew, sleeping peacefully as she breathes in the cold air on our walk.
Lizzy, fitfully pushing away the nurses in the emergency room as they try to find a vein for an IV.
“O God,” I pray silently, “please let me live to see at least one of them grow up. Please let me live to braid Cecilia’s hair and paint her nails and watch her open her presents on Christmas morning. Please let me live to buy her a kitten and play dress up with her and teach her how to cook.”
The machine tumbles and groans and stops. “You’re all done,” the technician calls as she rolls me out.
Now, all I have to do is wait three days to find out if this is true.