{Writing of “room(s)” during this Lenten season (for some reason), yesterday’s blog celebrated the “roomy” lot that surrounded our Ithaca home. Today, a few words about having too little space to move around in.}

At my advanced age, it’s almost fun to say that I have a sports injury. What takes the fun away is the injury part. I tried fielding a baseball last summer and fell while bare-handing it. No, I don’t play baseball. I have a “pitch-back” net contraption in the backyard and enjoy having it toss back the balls I pitch at it. It’s good excercise. My breathing becomes labored, I have to walk a bit to retrieve balls that didn’t know where to land, and, well, I still have my old baseball glove from high school, and I like using it.

One of my favorite things: playing catch with Ty

But that one afternoon, the ball headed not toward my gloved left hand, but over my right shoulder. I lept up and caught that sucker with my bare right hand. And as I congratuated myself, I lost my balance and fell, gravity getting the best of me. Months later came the MRI. You know where I’m going with this, right? “Room-wise?” It’s a very tight space in that machine.

I’ve not struggled with claustrophobia much before. Oh, there are times when I find myself in a cramped space for too long, as in a plane. Or, the cheap balcony seats of our local concert hall. (Never trying to save money like that again. The person next to me poured into my space for the longest symphony I’ve endured.) And I’ve had MRIs before. But this time, I swear it seemed like my nose was close to touching the roof of the tunnel.

Pexels (photo from Mart Production)

Once I was shoved in there, I realized how close I was to filling the tube. I couldn’t imagine a larger person even fitting into the thing. Now, it wasn’t that tight in reality. It just seemed it. Once I was situated in there, the technician turned on the jazz I requested for the headphones to help muffle the magnetic clanking and grinding and humming that the MRI insists on making. I guess I had closed my eyes as I was entering the tunnel. May as well get comfy. When I made a quick look into my limited space, I saw how close my face was to the inside of the machine, and anxiety took hold. I quickly closed my eyes and determined to keep them closed for the duration. Just pretend you are somewhere else, Jeff. Maybe meditate or something. But, man, were those headphones crappy! The music was the right choice for me, but the fidelity was so tinny that calm meditation was impossible.

This is all very natural, of course. No one enjoys the MRI experience. And if one is not claustrophobic going in, one may well be coming out. But the good news is, we do come out.

The jackhammering, close-quartered monster confirmed a rotator cuff tear. Great.

Sorry to have bothered you with this organ recital about tight spaces and no room to move. Lesson one: we are lucky to have health care and competent medical professionals. Many don’t. Lesson two: it’d be good now and then, maybe best now, to get out and enjoy the wide open space of a neighborhood street or local park, or maybe just a front porch, where you can stretch, breathe, and escape the confines of any tight space you find yourself in. Even metaphorically.