In Limbo - Part 6: Emotional Rescue

My husband knows a guy who knows a guy. Let’s call him Yves. Yves makes Murphy beds and goes mountain biking. Yves also does the graveyard shift on the MRI machines at one of our local hospitals.

I am given Yves’ cell # and email address. The drill is: email or call Yves with your contact information; if some time opens up on one of those long nights in medical imaging, Yves will call or email you to come on down. ASAP and on the hush-hush. I feel like a drug dealer.

For reasons unknown to me, MRI testing is carefully rationed in this part of Canada. Perhaps our provincial government is worried about its effects. Perhaps our premier thinks they are alien probe machines. Whatever the problem, patients sometimes wait years for an MRI, often long past the point that reasonable treatment is possible for whatever ails them. Sometimes patients die waiting, the machines and those that operate them sitting idle and empty.

I know I’ve been lucky. I have actually had several MRIs in what I consider to be my young life. I’ve had various problems and excellent doctors and sometimes friends in, if not high, at least well-placed positions. My MRIs have led to immediate and successful treatment. It should be the same for everyone.

Now, my deal with Yves may sound illicit but when I do get the call and rush to the hospital at 11 in the evening, squeezed between his first patient and his 12:30 one, Yves is nothing but professional. Of course I don’t have a requisition from a specialist, Yves knows this, but he does insist on having copies of my confirmed diagnosis and the xray that suggests my possible diagnosis, which recommends an MRI for confirmation.

He is dotting his i's and crossing his t’s. He is curious about Kienbock’s and seems to understand the relative urgency to my treatment. He knows his MRI can get me help faster. This gives me a strange confidence.

I put on my head phones and slide into the tube. I detest the tube. It is like a coffin and when the banging starts, it is easy to imagine yourself banging on the lid of the coffin, trying to get out. The U2 being piped in to comfort me is barely audible. I am very uncomfortable and a little scared but most of all, I am grateful. Progress at last.


Emotional Rescue:

	Rolling Stones - Emotional Rescue .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine