The inside of an MRI sounds like heartfelt discussion between a dial-up modem and an early 1980's videogame. Luckily I'm not claustrophobic, so I don't mind either the enclosing aperture or the layers of swaddling they use to keep me in place. I like the bolster under my legs, the warm blanket, the neon green earplugs, and even the pads they stick on either side of my head to keep it from moving. I like feeling the odd sounds ricocheting in my skull. Most of all, I like the fact that this MRI is voluntary. I signed up to do it as part of a research study on migraines.
The man who shepherded me through the procedure was warm and down-to-earth. He said that when he was a young boy, his mother used to lecture him and his brother, telling them that "thoughts have energy." He used to roll his eyes. Now, though, he's looking at the energy of my thoughts, in a way.
They did several scans of my head, each between 5 to 11 minutes long. For most of them, they told me to let my thoughts wander, don't think too hard about anything. Try not to problem solve. Practice meditation if possible.
I tried to oblige. Usually letting my thoughts wander is something I'm TOO good at. But when you've got an expensive medical marvel of modern machinery trained on your brain and the integrity of medical research is at stake, you want to be really really good at letting your mind wander, you know? I tried not to think too hard about not thinking too hard.
I thought about the warmth of the blanket. I wondered where the speaker was that let me hear their instructions. I looked up at the plastic cradle around my cranium, and beyond it the inside of the MRI tunnel. I looked at the insides of my eyelids. I thought light, flitting thoughts about pretty dresses, My Little Pony, and RuPaul's Drag Race.
That was the nice part of the MRI. Then we got down to business. For the next scan, they asked me to concentrate as hard as possible on what it feels like when I have a migraine.
In case you aren't familiar with migraines, they have a dizzying array of possible triggers. Any kind of physical or emotional stress can trigger one under the right conditions. Thinking too hard about migraines is enough emotional stress that it can actually trigger a migraine. In other words, migraineurs instinctively balk against trying to vividly replay the pain of a migraine. But that was what I was there for, after all.
I started picturing a migraine from where they typically start for me, which is crushing pain around the eye. I pictured a hand gripping my eyeball and optic nerve as hard as possible, grinding each fingertip deep into the tissue.
I thought of how that vice grip slowly engulfs my whole head. Of how the tension ratchets down my neck and shoulders, and across the muscles of my face. I thought of what it feels like to be curled in a ball on the couch, how I keep trying to find a position that soothes those agonized muscles, either by stretching them or letting them rest. I thought about how I try to grind my eyeball into a couch cushion, or into my hand. I don't know why, when it already feels like my eyeball is being crushed to pulp, I have that urge to mash it into a couch cushion. It seems to be what my body wants, though.
I thought about Phineas Gage, the man who astonished medical science by surviving a hole being blasted through his brain in 1848. I often think about Phineas Gage when I have a migraine. I often think of him lying in bed with brain matter oozing from his fractured skull. Of how his left eyeball swelled and rotted out of his head. It's a useless thought, but it won't go away.
I thought of a few migraines that caused my sense of taste to go awry, when I desperately craved salt, but couldn't taste salt in any of the saltiest foods my husband brought me. I thought of that one weird migraine I had when, trapped at work with a migraine and desperate to quell the nausea with a Coke and some chips, I staggered into the break room only to hit a wall of odor. I could suddenly smell all the metal in the room in painstaking detail. Everything in the room was the same as it always had been, and I hadn't been able to smell any of the metal in the room before (or since). The very can of Coke I had come for, usually the one food that helps, smacked me in the face with a powerful stench of aluminum.
I thought of my childhood. How my mother disappeared for several days each month into a darkened bedroom, kept as cold as possible. Of the large steel mixing bowl filled with green bile, because even though she hadn't been able to eat in days her stomach would keep rejecting its contents. And when she was able to try the least bit of sustenance, a can of Seven Up or Coke, I would have to rinse the ice cubes before I put them in her glass. What was odorless, tasteless, refreshing ice to me would overwhelm her tortured brain with the smells of everything else in the freezer. Month after month, year after year, decade after decade, that was her normal.
I thought of how this wasn't a big deal to some of the doctors she saw in her youth. Migraines were female trouble, and probably just a bid for attention. All in your head. Stop blowing it out of proportion.
And the devil of it is, they are partly in your head. You can trigger or aggravate them by fixating on them, or because of other negative emotions. But the reverse is not true. Thinking happy thoughts is not enough. Migraines can be triggered by a whiff of someone's perfume. Driving too long behind a diesel car. A change in the barometric pressure. A well-intentioned run on the treadmill. Eating too much spinach. The list goes on ad nauseum.
That's why I loved the MRI. And why I underwent a spinal tap for the same study. And why even when I had the unsettling headaches after the spinal tap, when I could feel the cerebrospinal fluid draining out of my skull and my brain sinking heavily into the crevices of my skull, I felt pretty lucky.
I'll take an MRI over being told it's imaginary. Too many people lose too much time to migraines.
The man who shepherded me through the procedure was warm and down-to-earth. He said that when he was a young boy, his mother used to lecture him and his brother, telling them that "thoughts have energy." He used to roll his eyes. Now, though, he's looking at the energy of my thoughts, in a way.
They did several scans of my head, each between 5 to 11 minutes long. For most of them, they told me to let my thoughts wander, don't think too hard about anything. Try not to problem solve. Practice meditation if possible.
I tried to oblige. Usually letting my thoughts wander is something I'm TOO good at. But when you've got an expensive medical marvel of modern machinery trained on your brain and the integrity of medical research is at stake, you want to be really really good at letting your mind wander, you know? I tried not to think too hard about not thinking too hard.
I thought about the warmth of the blanket. I wondered where the speaker was that let me hear their instructions. I looked up at the plastic cradle around my cranium, and beyond it the inside of the MRI tunnel. I looked at the insides of my eyelids. I thought light, flitting thoughts about pretty dresses, My Little Pony, and RuPaul's Drag Race.
That was the nice part of the MRI. Then we got down to business. For the next scan, they asked me to concentrate as hard as possible on what it feels like when I have a migraine.
In case you aren't familiar with migraines, they have a dizzying array of possible triggers. Any kind of physical or emotional stress can trigger one under the right conditions. Thinking too hard about migraines is enough emotional stress that it can actually trigger a migraine. In other words, migraineurs instinctively balk against trying to vividly replay the pain of a migraine. But that was what I was there for, after all.
I started picturing a migraine from where they typically start for me, which is crushing pain around the eye. I pictured a hand gripping my eyeball and optic nerve as hard as possible, grinding each fingertip deep into the tissue.
I thought of how that vice grip slowly engulfs my whole head. Of how the tension ratchets down my neck and shoulders, and across the muscles of my face. I thought of what it feels like to be curled in a ball on the couch, how I keep trying to find a position that soothes those agonized muscles, either by stretching them or letting them rest. I thought about how I try to grind my eyeball into a couch cushion, or into my hand. I don't know why, when it already feels like my eyeball is being crushed to pulp, I have that urge to mash it into a couch cushion. It seems to be what my body wants, though.
I thought about Phineas Gage, the man who astonished medical science by surviving a hole being blasted through his brain in 1848. I often think about Phineas Gage when I have a migraine. I often think of him lying in bed with brain matter oozing from his fractured skull. Of how his left eyeball swelled and rotted out of his head. It's a useless thought, but it won't go away.
I thought of a few migraines that caused my sense of taste to go awry, when I desperately craved salt, but couldn't taste salt in any of the saltiest foods my husband brought me. I thought of that one weird migraine I had when, trapped at work with a migraine and desperate to quell the nausea with a Coke and some chips, I staggered into the break room only to hit a wall of odor. I could suddenly smell all the metal in the room in painstaking detail. Everything in the room was the same as it always had been, and I hadn't been able to smell any of the metal in the room before (or since). The very can of Coke I had come for, usually the one food that helps, smacked me in the face with a powerful stench of aluminum.
I thought of my childhood. How my mother disappeared for several days each month into a darkened bedroom, kept as cold as possible. Of the large steel mixing bowl filled with green bile, because even though she hadn't been able to eat in days her stomach would keep rejecting its contents. And when she was able to try the least bit of sustenance, a can of Seven Up or Coke, I would have to rinse the ice cubes before I put them in her glass. What was odorless, tasteless, refreshing ice to me would overwhelm her tortured brain with the smells of everything else in the freezer. Month after month, year after year, decade after decade, that was her normal.
I thought of how this wasn't a big deal to some of the doctors she saw in her youth. Migraines were female trouble, and probably just a bid for attention. All in your head. Stop blowing it out of proportion.
And the devil of it is, they are partly in your head. You can trigger or aggravate them by fixating on them, or because of other negative emotions. But the reverse is not true. Thinking happy thoughts is not enough. Migraines can be triggered by a whiff of someone's perfume. Driving too long behind a diesel car. A change in the barometric pressure. A well-intentioned run on the treadmill. Eating too much spinach. The list goes on ad nauseum.
That's why I loved the MRI. And why I underwent a spinal tap for the same study. And why even when I had the unsettling headaches after the spinal tap, when I could feel the cerebrospinal fluid draining out of my skull and my brain sinking heavily into the crevices of my skull, I felt pretty lucky.
I'll take an MRI over being told it's imaginary. Too many people lose too much time to migraines.
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| I am serving up Magnetic Resonance Imaging realness. |
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