The slideshow of my mind

Last Friday I saw the inside of my head.

I had a CAT scan taken at the Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz. The night before I had felt a series of sharp pains on the right side of my forehead. They persisted at work the next day and I blacked out. I was unable to see or do anything other than slouch in my chair for a minute. I was weak and uneasy for the rest of the day. More than likely I had an attack of cluster or tension headaches. They’re common on my dad’s side of the family. The experience I had on Friday was my first, but I went to the emergency room to rule out any other, worse, explanations.

Dominican is the only gig in town. In Iowa City I had a choice of medical centers, though my parents told me to always go to Mercy (I guess they didn’t want me to be a lab rat at the university). I was anxious about what had happened, but excited to be doing something I had never done by myself. All my other emergency room visits were chaperoned by my mom or dad.

Since I’d never been there before I had to register. The office attendant wanted to know who my contact person was.

“What does that mean?” I said.

“It’s the person we call if you came here unconscious or worse,” she said. “Your parents, a friend?” She paused to let me think, then added, “Anyone?”

“They’re all two thousand miles away.”

I thought about it and gave her my parent’s number. As I walked back to my chair I felt more isolated and alone than ever before.

It was a busy night. All the emergency rooms were filled. I looked through the latest issue of Spin three or four times and thumbed through Ebony once or twice. The nurse at the front desk, who wore blue checkered scrubs, left for the night, leaving her post to a new nurse in light green scrubs. The new nurse, who had an English accent, approached and asked me standard questions (“Do you smoke CI-gar-ettes attol?”). I watched people come and go. An old woman in a wheelchair asked everyone where her cab was, two skaters came in accompanying a buddy who had a deep gash above his right eye, and a hippie couple, who were my age, came in. The guy was crying and fidgeting, trying to warm his hands while the girl explained what happened. He passed out in the waiting room.

After two hours my name was called and I was taken to a room. A doctor came in followed by a cute resident. I explained what happened. He wanted to take a CAT scan of my brain to check for tumors or bleeding. I thought of dollar bills being flushed down a toilet. The doctor left but the resident stayed.

“All I wanted to do was ask somebody about it,” I said. “I didn’t know I needed a CAT scan.”

“We’ll rule out everything we can,” she said. She gave me a blanket. “It’s always good to check when you have any kind of serious pains in your head, don’t you think?”

“I guess so.”

A technician (she was older, wasn’t cute, and didn’t have an accent) led me through a maze of halls to the machine. She said it was the smaller version.

“With the big one you go into a tunnel. We call this one ‘the donut,’” she said.

It did look like a donut. It was a large, thick loop with a hole in the middle. I laid on a table and she put a lead shield over my good parts (“A young guy like you doesn’t need to be battered with radiation down there”). I kept my head still and watched the metal plates and scanners spin inside the housing as it passed over my head, imaging slices of my brain. When it was done the technician said I could see the results if I wanted. Of course I did.

On a computer screen in the side room she began the slideshow of my mind. I saw the river-like groves of my brain matter, the swoosh shape of my ventricles, and the network of arteries and veins. The realm of my thoughts, emotions, ideas, knowledge, and memories was mapped in ten images.

“It looks like a normal, healthy, young brain,” the technician said. “I don’t see any tumors or bleeding, but I’m not a doctor. That’s why they go to school for ten years.”

She took me back to my room and I chilled with a National Geographic. The doctor came back (without the cute resident) and said everything looked normal. So I guess I’m stuck with yet another wonder of adulthood: chronic headaches.