Everybody Hurts Sometimes

I recently had a follow-up MRI (results were normal). If you are healthy and lucky, you may not know this but for many procedures there are two waiting rooms. The main one, where sometimes family or friends might accompany you, and the secondary one, where you must go alone. And if you've never had surgery, there's a point where you must say goodbye to your loved one(s) and continue the rest of the frightening journey alone with a stranger pushing your gurney.

At my most recent MRI, the main waiting room was pretty cheerful with families, friends, and significant others chatting. TV that no one was watching, coveted People magazines, and staff greeting and encircling wrists with scratchy plastic bracelets.

As I walked to the second waiting room (four chairs in a narrow hallway facing four changing rooms), a man sat enrobed in johnnies, a plastic bag containing his worldly possessions in his lap. I half-listened to instructions, changed into two johnnies and some scrub pants (one size fits no one) and dumped my stuff into a similar bag. I sat next to the man. Quiet. Scared. Humble.

Who do these clothes actually fit?

I followed the next nurse, carrying my bag, and had an IV inserted into my arm. It's not as easy or as quick to find a good vein after chemo. I returned to the narrow hallway and sat next to the stranger. We didn't speak.

Next up - the MRI room. Dumped my stuff on a chair, kicked off my shoes, took off one "modesty" johnnie, climbed on to the table. Opened the second johnnie, laid on my belly, topless on a board with rectangles cut out for breasts to freely dangle. The nurse made minor adjustments. With my head in a face pillow and earplugs protecting my hearing, it was hard to follow directions. She handed me a bulb to squeeze if I panicked, attached tubes to my IV and left me alone. 

The machine rolled me backwards until the right parts were aligned. I lay for an ear splitting half an hour wandering from near giggles at the sound of the machine, to wondering if my sternum would crack under the weight of my torso, to lucid thoughts about how the noises could be used to torture people, to the edge of madness. I held my breath when they inserted the radioactive dye and silently prayed to not have an allergic reaction.

Following the test, I reversed the process, and exited through the main waiting room. The people hadn't changed but I was different. 

The second waiting room and the corridors to the operating room don't care if your young, old, underweight, overweight, poor, rich, famous, infamous, short, tall, white, black, Christian, Muslim, anti-choice, pro-choice, heterosexual, LGBTQA+, Republican or Democrat. The experience is the same. You are alone. You are scared. You are vulnerable. You are naked in an ill fitting dress.

No one is immune. There is no vaccine for the human condition. Sooner or later we all die. We will all be touched by illness and loss. We will all be made humble and vulnerable. We will feel less human, and more like a problem needing to be fixed. Everybody hurts, sometimes.