Peace Over Panic

Many people feel nervous getting an MRI. For this author, it was terrifying.

- Andrea Owan, Tucson, Arizona

ILAY ON THE TABLE OF THE MRI machine. The technician put a pillow under my head and Velcroed my legs and wrists to the table. “Stay still,” she said. “It’ll be over before you know it.” For the next half hour, I had to lie motionless inside a tube so narrow, its top nearly touched my nose. I was on the verge of panic. The Velcro straps felt like shackles. I wanted to get up and run.

What was wrong with me? I’d never been claustrophobic. Very little scared me, in fact. That was the athlete in me. I’d done competitive gymnastics when I was younger—the reason I was getting this MRI. An old hip injury had acted up, and the doctor wanted a look at the joint.

Actually, I suspected the reason behind my panic but it made no sense. A few months earlier, my husband, Chris, and I had watched a TV documentary about how, long ago, people were sometimes inadvertently buried alive because medical science wasn’t advanced enough to determine death reliably.

“How dreadful!” I’d said when the show was over. I didn’t think much about it until we took a trip to California and I stepped into a hotel elevator. At once, panic gripped me. The walls of the elevator seemed to close in. My heart raced. I broke out in a sweat. Even worse, it was one of those slow, clanky old hotel elevators. Just getting to the second floor took forever. At last the door trundled open and I bolted out.

I felt so foolish. That TV show had spooked me more than I thought. I told Chris when I got to our room and figured that would be the end of it.

It wasn’t. From then on, anytime I rode an elevator alone, I freaked out. I was fine when someone else was with me. On my own, I couldn’t handle it. I started avoiding elevators.