<\/p>\n
Illustration: Marley Allen Ash<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n first person<\/i> Daily personal pieces submitted by readers. Want to talk? See our guidelines. <\/i>tgam.ca\/Essay Guide<\/i>.<\/i><\/p>\n I had my eyes closed when the MRI machine started making loud rhythmic noises. <\/p>\n Two weeks ago, I expected to be in and out of the hospital soon for routine CT scans. Instead, as soon as he was done, the technician told me to wait.<\/p>\n The room has changed. The people who were once active have become strangely kind. One of them tapped me on the arm. “Hi, honey,” she said, smiling brightly, “please wait outside, I’ll be right there.” That kindness seemed out of place and somehow made things worse.<\/p>\n They called me back for a second scan with contrast. Once that was done, they drove me home.<\/p>\n \u201cBaby, that whole thing was really weird,\u201d I said to my partner Vanshika as we drove away.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t assume anything yet,\u201d she said. Her calmness didn’t erase my fear, but it kept it from engulfing the car.<\/p>\n A few hours later, in the middle of a meeting, my phone rang. my doctor. My stomach dropped, and then my heart started pounding. I called back and pressed the automated message. \u201cYour phone is important to us.\u201d Then my email inbox rang.<\/p>\n The subject line is “Urgent Message from Doctor.”<\/p>\n When I opened it, I hit a clinical language barrier. One line jumped out. It’s a lump. The report lists a laundry list of possible threats, including ischemia, encephalitis, demyelination, and neoplasms. Big words that are conveyed frankly without any human voice attached.<\/p>\n I sent the image to a friend who is a neurosurgeon and asked for his opinion. His reply came quickly: Do you have problems with your eyesight? headache?<\/p>\n No, no.<\/p>\n Then he sent a voice memo. I listened to it as if it were a life raft. He explained the scan in plain language and translated panic into patterns. The phrases I stuck to were simple, with no buffs or mass effects. Does not light up. I’m not forcing anything.<\/p>\n Still, an MRI was necessary. And then we had to wait.<\/p>\n That wait had a strange effect on time. The night was easy. The morning was brutal. I woke up in fear before my feet hit the floor. I began to notice every sensation in my skull. Pain was a symptom. My brain was running worst-case simulations all day long.<\/p>\n Ten days later, I received a phone call. There was an empty slot for the next day.<\/p>\n In the MRI room, a head coil, a plastic frame, was placed over me and it felt too much like a cage. I asked for water as I was already fighting panic, but before anyone could answer I slipped into the tube. I closed my eyes and tried to take a few breaths.<\/p>\n My mind turned to my grandmother and death, as if there was only one destination for fear. I came to my senses and tried to return to the only thing that was true in that moment. That meant I was alive and inside the noisy tube.<\/p>\n When the scan was finished, no one rushed in with urgent sympathy. The staff were efficient and normal. They let me slide out and move on.<\/p>\n Days have passed. No phone. The terrifying silence began to ease. It slowly became a kind of comfort.<\/p>\n Results were received through an online patient portal. It wasn’t a brain tumor. There was no tumor. <\/p>\n A few weeks later, the neurologist performed a physical exam on me. I passed. However, he requested another MRI scan six months later. <\/p>\n That night, Vanshika looked at me and asked a question so simple that it trumped everything else.<\/p>\n \u201cTrust your body,\u201d she said. “Did you show any signs of illness?”<\/p>\n I quit. I honestly checked and the answer was no.<\/p>\n Calendar events haven’t disappeared, but my relationship with them has changed. Question marks still hung over the next few months, but it was no countdown to the funeral.<\/p>\n We got engaged before that 6 month test. When I entered the MRI scan again, I felt more calm than fear. At one point, I even opened my eyes and realized how small the machine was.<\/p>\n Later the neurologist said nothing had changed. It’s possible that what they were looking at was an old scar, something they only discovered by chance. He mentioned the high risk of seizures and gave a final reminder that even if you feel well, your body carries a history.<\/p>\n He scheduled another follow-up MRI exam in 18 months.<\/p>\n Life kept moving. we got married. Distant scan dates remained in the background like muted notifications.<\/p>\n A week before my last MRI, I was nervous, but not like the first time. When I entered the hospital, what I felt most was a sense of gratitude. For Vanshika. For my family. For friends. And for the past year, I myself have continued to have looping thoughts about the end and still go about my days.<\/p>\n Inside the MRI, I did something small and symbolic.<\/p>\n I opened my eyes.<\/p>\n The end will come. It comes to everyone. But that’s not the case now. And when it comes, I want to wake up and meet it, just like I met that machine.<\/p>\n Sameer Bade lives in Toronto.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Dealing #anxiety #knowing #whats #brain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Open this photo in gallery: Illustration: Marley Allen Ash first person Daily personal pieces submitted by readers. Want to talk? See our guidelines. tgam.ca\/Essay Guide. I had my eyes closed when the MRI machine started making loud rhythmic noises. Two weeks ago, I expected to be in and out of the hospital soon for routine … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3],"tags":[109,797,794,591,795,792,793,796],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","category-mental-health","tag-anxiety","tag-brain","tag-dealing","tag-first-person","tag-knowing","tag-noah-stack","tag-nodelphi","tag-whats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}