To the woman sleeping in an MRI machine

Listen, I love you, joy is coming

Dearest Wild and Wonderful readers,

In this edition, a story about medical scans and finding joy. It is difficult to write about illness when there are bigger problems out there in the world. But I wanted to share this experience with you.

A special welcome to all who are new here. I’m thrilled that you have joined us. As always, thank you for reading Wild and Wonderful, I am grateful for your support.

With love and kindness,

Kate x

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The first watery wash of the morning, Long Beach, Tasmania

Last week I fell asleep in an MRI machine.¹

It was Monday morning, before breakfast and the packing of the school lunchboxes and the raising of voices to get my children out the door and into the day.

Perhaps, I was soothed by the banging of those huge magnets. Or tired, that constant condition of young motherhood. I like to think I was dreamy and serene, a sleeping beauty in a glass coffin. It’s only taken eleven-and-a-half years of brain scans not to worry and leak tears from my eyes that my life was in danger.²

*

It was meant to be a surprise. My husband had booked the scan, hoping it would mean I would sleep well the night before and not loose my mind to uncertainty. But I had pressed him for details a few days prior and he had told me the plan.

Now on the morning of my scan, I am lying awake in bed, the sky outside my window as black and heavy as my heart. I decide to get up, make a cup of tea, and write in my notebook. I am not worrying. I am not scared that my brain tumour may one day obliterate me. I am tumbling, weary with the weight of all the things that I love. How could I ever let go?

And as I spin it is the small things that catch me — my old cat chasing her tail in the hallway, a game she has played since she was a kitten. A purple helium balloon resting on the ceiling, brought home from a music concert by my youngest daughter, its string tail brushing my shoulder. The twittering of birds outside the kitchen window, announcing the day. The sun rising over the River and behind the hills, washing the sky with the first morning colours. And on the bench, my late mother-in-law’s orchid with stems of the loveliest pink flowers.

There is joy blossoming everywhere, I only have to look.

*

An MRI machine looks inside bodies, through skin and fat, under bones, to muscles and organs, nerve pathways and blood vessels. It uses powerful magnets, radio waves and a computer to make pictures of the things that hide deep within us.

The machine waits in the middle of the room, idling in its white and circular bulk — a lunar module, a portal to another world. In its centre is a tunnel, just the right size for a body. Smooth and cylindrical. When it is switched on, it becomes a magnetic monster. Hungry for metal.³

I lie here on a padded stretcher, my socked feet hanging out of a cotton blanket. In the palm of my right hand, resting on my chest, is a buzzer. Snug over my head is a plastic cage. There is with a small mirror angled so that I can see the radiographer going about their work. It is not uncomfortable. But it takes all my strength to be still in this tight white space.

Anyone who has been inside an MRI machine will know what it feels to be held in a state of unknowing terror.

You must not move but your heart is thumping against your ribs so hard you just might break. And here in this scanner, you know that love is a dangerous thing. For this machine can see what stalks through your body unnoticed. It knows you are a mortal thing.

There are foam buds in my ears and headphones over the top playing a classical radio station. Not that I can hear the music. The noise of the MRI machine is seismic. Not unlike a heavy-metal song — first the thrumming as the band warms up, then the lyrics, a loop of bangs and knocks, and the high-pitched whirring and buzzing, the bridge. You could learn to tolerate it. Many do not.⁴

And to this machine’s song I fall asleep.

*

All this time my husband waits, standing by the door of the MRI room. How hard this must be. To be on the outside. Steadying your fragile heart, knowing it will break if what you love is gone.

At home, our four children are waking up in their beds. The street is murmuring with birds. Bread is being unloaded from a truck parked on the curb opposite our house and is carried into the corner shop in brown plastic trays. Everyone and everything is beginning their day.

I am moving, sliding out of the centre of the machine. I come to a rest and the radiographer appears. Their hands reaching out to remove my helmet, take my ear buds, brush my shoulder. How are you feeling?, they ask.

I dress in a cubicle with a blue curtain. Put my watch back on. Untie my hair, so it falls just below my shoulders.

On the drive home from the hospital, my phone rings. It is my youngest son. I listen with my head leaning on the glass of the passenger window. Mum, where are you?, he asks in his slow big-boy voice, When are you coming home?

I tell him we are almost on our street. We had an appointment, we will be home soon. Have you had breakfast?

No, I am waiting for you, he says. Then quiet, just the sound of his breathing. But as we pull into the driveway, I hear his voice again, just above a whisper, I love you, Mum.

And his words are all the joy that I need to open the car door and step into the day.⁵

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A poem about finding joy

The summer day
by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

---

Things I’ve loved reading on Substack

• The Awkward Weight of Acceptance by

  Adam Marc (he/him)
  . Adam is a writer who lives with brain cancer. ‘Anyone who wants you to be strong all the time has never tried to carry this thing.’

• Reasons to Live Through the Apocalypse, a meditation on small joys by author and journalist

  Suleika Jaouad
  . During treatment for her leukemia, Suleika wrote about the small joys that gave her sustenance.

• Running is not the hardest thing by adventure writer

  Bel Jackson Prow
  .

  Bel writes about the motivations of runners and adventure athletes.

• On this island, I am surrounded by the dead by writer, poet, and evolutionary biologist

  rebecca hooper
  . Gorgeous writing about life and death on a small island tucked between two seas.

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A few other things

• I read somewhere that a good short story is like a novel in a snow globe. Exquisite. I’m on a roll. I began with Small Things Like These and Foster by Claire Keegan. Then Georgia Blaine’s collection — We all Lived in Bondi Then and now Anton Chekhov’s Fifty Two Stories.

• Also reading Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan, in preparation for

  Bri Lee
  ’s workshop in November. The novel takes place during Sri Lanka’s three-decade civil war. The first line is gripping — I met the first terrorist I knew when he was deciding to become one.

• Tasmania’s spring weather is fantastical. Skiing last weekend at Mount Mawson, swimming at the beach yesterday. The water was bitter, but the spring sun was warm and good on my skin. While I swam my children ran in and out of the water, shouting and wheeling. I made a promise to myself to swim each week in sea. Perhaps one day I might swim through the winter.

• Next weekend, I’m joining a team of women to participate in a multi-sport adventure race on the east coast of Tasmania - The Freycinet Challenge. We have called our team — the Turbo Chooks! Wish us well.

What are you up to?

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It’s been a big week of school musicals and presentations. Now two weeks of spring holidays with my four gorgeous children. We have a family trip planned to the west coast of Tasmania — beach combing, fishing, long evenings reading by the fire. I’m excited. But I haven’t forgotten about you, my lovely readers. I have scheduled an adventure story and a few other things, while I am away.

Wising you unicorns and rainbows,⁶

and all the things that bring you joy.

Kate x

1. MRI stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. This story was inspired by the poem To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall by Kim Addonizio

2. In 2013, I was diagnosed with a rare brain tumour — RGNT. I had brain surgery to remove the tumour and after a long period of recovery received a positive prognosis. My tumour is not cancerous, but any abnormal growth in the brain can lead to disability and death. I am passionate about supporting the brain tumour community in Australia. If can read more about my brain tumour story here.

3. Before entering an MRI room, all things (magnetic) that this machine might like to swallow are removed. There are stories of a mobile phone, stethoscope, oxygen tank, and even a wheel chair being sucked into the centre of the machine.

4. Many people experience ‘scanxiety’ — anxious feelings leading up to, during, and after a medical scan. I have written about ways to cope with this type of anxiety here. Others experience claustrophobia — an intense fear of enclosed spaces — and require sedation for MRI scans.

5. And yesterday, I saw my neurosurgeon and received the news that my scans are stable. Relief and joy.

6. My four-year-old daughter’s greatest joys.