Thin Slices

I was heading from my office to Union Square for a brain MRI when a man with an accent I couldn’t place, not quite Russian but close, remarked on how many commuter buses were parked on the streets surrounding the Port Authority. “It’s because so many more people commute from New Jersey than when they built the bus station. It can’t hold them all. They’re building a new one,” I told him. “How long will it take?” he wanted to know. “They’re saying ten years.” I know a lot about this because my office is half a block from the old Port Authority on one side and half a block from the temporary one they’re building on the other side. The Pastor and I have been to multiple community meetings, and I testified at a City Council hearing about it. “That’s how long they’re saying for the construction at JFK, too” he said. “Government projects,” I told him. “If a private developer is building something it goes up really fast.” “The government spends so much money on maintaining the City,” he said, “They could build a whole new city for that. They waste so much money on that.” “And on stupid wars,” I say. “For what they spend to kill people, they could end hunger, homelessness, all kinds of things.” “But they don’t want to,” I say. “All they care about is greed and money.” We talk some more about the war and the situation in Ukraine and then we get to 14th st. Just as I am leaving, he says “World War 3 or American Civil War, I don’t know which is coming first.” With that disturbing thought, I head into the lobby which is usually crowded but after 6pm is empty except for a few security guards. I am always amazed by the guards at this building – there are a lot of doctors and specialties, but they can tell you which floor and suite each one is in without checking anything. I don’t have to ask, though – I could find my way to radiology with my eyes closed. Checking in, I discover that they have assigned me to MRI 2. An older machine, it’s a little smaller and it scrunches my shoulders. “I do better in MRI 1,” I tell the tech and he calls them. “It’s a 30 min wait,” he says. I’d rather wait 30 minutes than be scrunched, so I agree and he leads me through the through the back halls that connect the two. We pass a door that says “Radiology Core Do Not Enter” and I imagine the warp core of the Starship Enterprise pulsing with light. Since the MRI itself reminds me of the coffins the Enterprise jettisons into space, I guess my thoughts have a Star Trek theme. When it’s my turn, they slide me in and I’m struck by how much louder the noise is. I think it’s because they’re doing my brain and the noise seems to be closer to my ears, one high pitched tone in particular. I think about the noises – one sounds a lot like the jackhammer outside my office, and another like someone hitting a gong in rapid succession. Then there’s one that reminds me of a woodpecker – like you’re inside the trunk of the tree and the woodpecker is….I pondered the correct verb for this. “Peck” is obvious based on the name, but it seems too gentle for what they actually do, it’s more like drumming. When I am in there, I always mean to find out the specifics of how MRIs actually work and why they make all this noise, but then I never do. This one takes longer than usual, probably because she has requested “thin slices through the brain stem,” a phrase that reminds me of a block of meat going into a deli slicer. Then they slide me out and the tech prepares to inject the contrast. She starts with my right arm, but something goes wrong, and she switches to the left. My right arm was stinging intensely when she slid me back in. To take my mind off it, I counted backwards from 100, ran out of numbers, and started over but counting backward by 7s this time. “Serial 7s” it’s called, part of the technique we learned in grad school for assessing cognitive functioning. When it’s finally done, they pull me out and the tech from MRI 2 is there. He asks me if I need him to unlock the locker, but I tell him I know how to do it. He starts to laugh, “I told them, she’s been here before, let’s give her MRI 1.”