A few years ago…well almost a decade ago now
I was stuck…in a tiny little tube…I was having trouble breathing, sweaty, struggling to move, on my side, bogged down and completely unable to even wriggle forward or backwards…again, I was stuck.
Lt. Green, the salt-fried truck officer yanked me out of the 6 foot long, 13″ square “confined space” tube and quietly shamed me for not being able to overcome such a tiny little obstacle…literally.
He intimated that men whose gut formed pannuses (what is the plural of pannus anways?) that overlapped their thighs could make it through that tube. He marveled – if the fat-bodies could hump their way through it, but I couldn’t – I bristled. I put my mask back on and I flew through that damned tube – I wormed through like a champ.
Fast forward nine years.
My back, which has hurt for the better part of a half-decade, is starting to hurt for more than just a day at a time. I’m always aware of it, the pain much worse now, is at times barely manageable. It’s likely soft-tissue damage and so the obvious thing to do in order to look at the soft-tissues – is to do an MRI.
An MRI is a test where the area to be imaged, in placed in the center of a huge magnet – basically you find yourself in the middle of a tube, while what sounds like a jackhammer thumps and tumbles all around your body. There is about 2″ of clearance all the way around you. It’s a tight fit – at least for me it was…
And it’s been a terrifying fit too. For some reason being on the table on my back, being in the magnet – unable to put my hands up to my eyes or anywhere near my face, over my chest, nothing – is unabashedly terrifying. It conjures up images of some of my most incredible fears – being buried alive. For that reason I’d rather be cremated than anything else – I have no desires to be buried.
I had gone from axe-swinging to anxious. I’d lost the fire in my belly. At least that’s how it’s seemed. I’d love to be able to tell you I finished the test – completely under my own willpower – but in a shockingly powerful way, my brain told ME ,that I wasn’t getting in that tube. At least not headfirst. I wondered if I could jump in the tube feet first. I wondered if I could be knocked out cold with a horse-dose of sedatives.
I’ve thought about losing weight – even going as far as making a bet with a fellow classmate who is entirely too skinny to want to lose weight – to make the tube a less claustrophobic and intimidating place to spend an hour of my time.
I’ve thought about zoning out – pretending I’m in outer space, and that I have to lie perfectly still in order to stay in my oxygen bubble – but that there was ultimately nothing that would keep me calmly lodged in the narrow little tube.
Damn. My doctor prescribed me some sedatives.
The tranquilizers by the way – two pills total, cost me and my insurance company $11.99. They were almost wholly ineffective to boot. I couldn’t help but think that it was why people didn’t go to their doctor – so that he could tell them to buy two expensive ass pills that gave them funky side effects and didn’t really do much to help them feel any better.
So now tangentially, as I’m getting my medication filled – I’m wondering if the exorbitant prices of drugs is one of the driving reasons behind the health disparities that we see in America. I’m wondering if it’s one of the driving reasons behind the amount of chronic disease we see in America – and I’m wondering if it’s the reason that we see people end up completely noncompliant with the regimens that doctors prescribe their patients.
The two pills never even touched the anxiety, the crushing feeling that prompted me to feel like I was suffocating even though I had just drawn in a deep breath of “fresh” air. My stomach tightened and I was having crushing palpitations. Physiologically, I was fighting for my life – my heart fluttering wildly, pupils dilating, and me shaking uncontrollably. I belched and passed gas for a solid ten minutes after the attempt. I walked out in the cool night angry, frustrated with myself and more importantly my head for fearing death in a way I’d always hoped I was immune to.
On tranquilizers, 20 minutes after the procedure had short-circuited a second time due to my overactive limbic system – my pulse was a solid twenty beats a minute above its’ normal. I still felt nauseous. The fight or flight response was still kicked into gear. I wondered what it might be like for those who had random panic attacks when they went about their daily life – doing things like going to the doctor, dentist, post-office. Going to school or the aquarium. At home with relatives, out at a grocery store. On an airplane.
I reflected on the last flight I was on – with a woman who seemed a little edgy and as it turned out she was – fairly afraid of flying – especially through turbulence. Her body language betrayed the shitstorm of fear that was flying through her mind. Her hands clutched out in vain for some sort of safety bar – but then she realized it would’ve been attached to the very airplane she thought was crashing.
A friend of mine summed it up quite succinctly and nicely – “when you are starting to panic, there is a duality in the logic you use to attempt to calm yourself down – you are able to tell yourself that nothing is wrong, and that you are perfectly safe, because there is nothing threatening or harmful happening…but then you realize that even if nothing threatening or harmful is going on – and you feel the way you do, something MUST be wrong, and now you don’t know WHAT it is.”
His understanding made me both laugh, and comforted me.
Now I’m confronting my own mortality. I’ve put on some years, and I’ve begun to learn about all of the myriad ways people can not only die – but degrade and die. I’ve also become much more aware of my place in the world and the world itself. This world is a terrifying and sickening place.
And so naturally, I’ve become more fearful, more anxious in general – and I’m wondering if its’ natural manifestation is via my irrational expression of fears. I’m wondering if I’m doomed to a semi-decrepit body that hurts but isn’t diseased enough to warrant much treatment.
I fear that inattention and slow decline exquisitely. More than ever before I realize the potency and happiness of youth. And I’m very glad I blew all of my money and did as much as I could when I was young. I’m glad I was mostly single – I’m glad I came out of my early twenties and late teens without children or hard committments to anyone other than myself.
But now I have to make sure that in this next few decades, I can learn to live in a fearless manner. They are there – I just need to ignore them. That’s a strength that I’m going to have to develop. As you grow older – the monsters under your bed don’t go away – they just change clothes and get jobs as attorneys or politicians. Or creditors. Or police.
I can’t help but wonder how people feel when they go to the doctor. Do they think they have a crushing super-debilitating illness? Do they feel like its’ going to be a pop-fly illness? Or is it going to be a chronic slog through misery?
Are their physicians going to make it any better? Can their physicians make it any better? How are they going to deal with it? Are their physicians going to even attempt to protect them from their own vulnerabilities and insecurities? Their unique neuroses?
My doctor did. A healthy dose of razzing followed. But he went on and sent me to a physiatrist even though he knows they are going to look at him like he’s not doing his best for not getting me into an MRI. But he did his best – both for the specialist I’m going to see, but also – and ultimately more importantly – for me.
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