Yesterday, while being pushed inside the MRI, I was looking for signs of the effects of the opiate-painkiller -- I guessed I had swallowed it about thirty minutes before -- to kick in. I had been disappointed to learn that that it was impossible to play music inside the machine. Through the sharp pains behind my eyes and cranium, I was surprised by a clear, albeit dull, beat. It took me a few moments to realize I was sensing my own heartbeat.
It was a good thing that once the procedure started my head was held as tight as Hannibal Lecter's face-mask by some contraption inside the machine. For, despite the two layers of earplugs, the sound of the MRI was deafening and I wondered if one could faint while immobilized flat inside a machine. My next thought amused me: I wonder if FMRI machines [the ones that generate all the hype and beautiful pictures in claims about the brain] also make this kind of deafening noise. All along the shrill noise I could trace the rhythm of my heartbeat, who I noted ruefully, could keep more steady beat than I--I am pretty sure I have some kind of genetic defect that makes it impossible for me to keep beat on the dance-floor or inside symphony-hall. While I was musing on to what degree my steady beat represented my higher, more harmonious self than the day-to-day, agitated and frenetic self, I remembered a performance, once [I couldn't recall if it was in Boston, Chicago, or New York], where I saw Michael Baryshnikov perform a dance duet with his heartbeat projected through the sound speaker system. I couldn't remember if the performance had also projected the sound visually. [See here for a performance of what I am talking about.]
And then, finally, I felt my tension ease and closed my eyes.
One of the very few downsides of being married to a very caring surgeon is that she'll consider all the worst-case scenarios that may lurk behind one's painful symptoms. I knew that the most likely outcome of the scan was that I had some kind of sinusitis, but the neurologist had warned me that it could also be a pinched nerve of some sort. Since my brother-in-law is a brain surgeon who happily and eagerly works heroic 20hours shifts [I consider this a recipe for disaster of the sort that occur when fatigued truck drivers steer off the cliffs], I had decided that the most dangerous thing that could ever happen to me is to be in the hands of a brain surgeon. But I knew my wife had already contemplated rare complications that would end, so imagined, in a slow but inevitable decline accompanied by horrific, experimental treatments that would lengthen my life for a few months. I could tell the painkillers were kicking in, because I caught myself almost giggling that she didn't have time to research all the possibilities awaiting me because she had been in OR treating the needy most of the day rushing in an out to comfort me and to cajole the best possible care for me while teaching nurse-practitioners more efficient and less painful ways of placing intravenous lines.
At the end of the day, the diagnosis is as of yet unclear, but it seems most of the worst has been ruled out.
Even so, the more important discovery is that the stoics had overlooked an important truth: the emendation of the soul starts with giggling.
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