Don't Move

I've been waterboarded!

I was instructed to arrive at the Cancer Care Center yesterday morning, and I dutifully showed up ten minutes early. (I always show up for my appointments ten minutes early, but it never seems to shorten my wait times.) The oncology nurse directed me into a small room where I had to change into a hospital gown, no mean feat in a wheelchair. I was then brought into the CT scanning room and had to transfer onto a narrow plastic table. The nurse got me positioned and then she pulled my gown halfway down my arms, effectively pinning them at my sides.

"Don't move," she said.

The nurse explained that they would be making a mold of my head to hold me in place during the radiation treatments.

She told me to close my eyes and mouth. The next sensation I felt was a boiling hot, dripping wet, plastic mesh being pulled tightly over my face and ratcheted down to the table!

"Hannibal Lecter has nothing on me," I thought.

Fingers molded the web into my eye sockets and along the contours of my nose. "We're going to do a targeting scan," said the nurse. With the ubiquitous, "Don't move," I heard the door click shut behind her.

The table vibrated and began to move. The technology of modern medicine has a sound all its own. From the infamous beeping of hospital monitoring equipment, to the horrific bangs and magnetic buzzes of the MRI, to the electronic whirring of the radiological scanner. A soul-chilling thrum surrounded my head and the table slid forward, although I quickly lost all sense of direction.

After some indeterminable amount of time, the whirring slowed and the table stopped shaking. (Now I was the only thing shaking.) I became aware of someone by me. "You did great," said the nurse. "I'm going to walk down to radiology and make sure they look at the pictures right away. Will you be alright for a few minutes?"

"Umm maawaa humpf," I replied through my nose.

As she was leaving, she turned back and said, "You're doing great... Don't move."

By this time I was frowning without moving my lips and shaking my head without motion. I started laughing inside at the absurdity of the situation, how all the moments of my life and the millions of random events and possibilities, had led me to having my head pinned to a table, left alone with no one but myself for company.

After several minutes the nurse rushed in saying, "I'm so sorry, I just talked to the doctor and he told me you're claustrophobic." She quickly released the clamps and removed the hardened mask from my face. "I have a prescription for you for Xanax," she said.

"A day late and a dollar short," I thought.

I blinked and licked my dry lips. The nurse slowly got me into a sitting position and I transferred back into my wheelchair. After I got dressed (no mean feat) I asked the nurse if I was good to go. "Yep. You're all done for today," she said. "You did great. You didn't move."