It's really cold in here. A slight shiver passes through the stiffly starched poly/cotton robe. I'm wearing a medical gown, it's crinkled into stiff furrows and folds. Drab green -- a color so bland no one in their right mind would wear, thus relegated to the world of medicine. I'm naked under the gown save for a pair of cotton panties. There was a metal zipper in my dress, therefore it had to be left behind. The scratchy material scrapes against my goose bumps, aggravating them.

"Is it O.K. for me to go in here with my sandals? They have metal on them."

The technician smiles.

"Yes, it's O.K. -- they won't get sucked into the machine or anything."

I enter the room. It's a scene out of a bad science fiction movie. THX-1138-esque. Blindingly white, it's a big, open, spacious room with cluttered tables ringing the walls. The machine sits in the middle -- bulky and crouching as if it was just waiting for the right moment to pounce on its prey. Its prey being me, of course.

"I want you to get up here," the technician pats the narrow table protruding out of the mouth of the machine like a grotesque tounge, "and lay down."

I take my sandals off and leave them by the step leading up to the platform. My fingers fumble to keep the robe closed; did I put it on backwards? Then I lay on the table. Is this how Ipehgenia felt right before her father offered her up to the gods? Perhaps.

"Put your arm through this tube."

I do. She picks up some little chunks of foam rubber.

"I'm going to wedge these pieces of foam around your arm so you can't move it. Get comfortable -- you can't move while we're taking the scans.

I nod, though I'm thinking, "How am I supposed the not move if I'm shivering?"

"Are you comfortable? Oh -- here."

She hands me a pair of small, white foam cylinders

"Put these in your ears, it's kind of noisy in there."

Being as my right hand is trapped in the tube, I fumble to put the ear plugs in with one hand. Now I feel like I'm under water. The ear plugs make my head feel full and heavy -- like I've got a nasty head cold. And they itch. As a matter of fact, most of my body itches at this point.

I lay back on the platform, one arm in a plastic tube -- the other laying palsied on my chest.

"Don't worry about that arm. Once you get into the tube there won't be any place for it to go."

I attempt to swallow a mysterious lump that has materialized in my throat. "How long is this going to take?"

"Oh, not long. About forty-five minutes."

Forty-five minutes? I inwardly groan.

"Remember -- don't move -- or we'll have to do the scans all over again."

Great.

With a click and a whir, I begin to roll smoothly into the mouth of the metal beast. My mind is racing. The MRI machine must have been designed to deceive. There's no doubt about it. It's a tube, all right, but the entry way is flared out, like a giant funnel. At first it seems quite bearable -- this isn't too cramped -- but as I am conveyed along into the depths of the contraption I'm faced with a chilling reality. I am trapped in a cylindrical space that is not much larger than my body and my legs itch. I take a deep breath. "Get comfortable," I think to myself, "You're going to be here for a while."

P.S. I don't have cancer or anything; this was an MRI for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, which I don't have. Turns out I have Thoratic Oultet Syndrome. How's that for obsure?