License To Love

Trapped! One Woman's Journey To Hell and Back

Anyone will tell you: this is not supposed to happen.  Hospital machines don't malfunction, and no one but a direct descendant of Joseph Mengele would ever design a machine that you lie inside like a corn dog that offers no escape hatch in case of malfunction.

Nobody likes an MRI machine. It is not natural to be happy, or even okay with being in a space that encloses you all all sides. In fact, it is so unnatural that they must mask your senses with things like fans blowing on your face, and big fat headphones playing Jimmy Buffet, or worse -- Nickelback--  to help you think you are somewhere else for 45 minutes. Some people even take drugs (given to them by doctors) in order to manage their time in one of those curvy, coffin shaped copy machines.   I should have. 

I showed up on a windy Friday night to have an MRI of my neck.  Since I was in eye-crossing pain, I had nothing better to do that evening.  I sat in the faux Tuscan waiting room and watched the path of Tropical storm Fay beat a path to my city's doorstep on a television that was nicer than the one at my house.  Masochistic weather reporters were getting whipped by the wind and rain, saying things like, "Be careful!"  "It may be more dangerous than it looks," and "Anything can happen," and I should have heeded their warnings.

The heavy, lead-encased wooden door creaked open and Lurch's mother, with an open folder in her hands, called my name.

She asked me to strip naked, even though she would be taking films of my neck, which is located very high up on my body. I  think this was her way of kicking up her Friday night, because when I came out in a little speckled gown, knock-kneed and shivering, she smirked behind her folder.

She asked me some questions very slowly, as if she thought I was mentally impaired, or she herself were in some sort of special work program.  She asked questions about numbness, tingling, movement, and accidents, and she explained how things would go, while I stood shivering with my buttocks hanging out of the back of the gown for no real reason, since, again, she was about to take pictures of my neck.

"First, we are going to take some images of you.  It is important to not breathe or swallow during the cycles, as the machine is very sensitive.  Then, after we do about a half hour, I'm going to inject some radioactive dye into your body and we'll take some more images.  You don't have any kidney disease, do you, because this dye is known to cause death in people with certain types of kidney problems."

My chilly shivering turned to trembles of fear.

"Hop right up," she said as she patted a long tray with a sheet on it. Within 45 seconds she had expertly locked my neck in a plastic and foam neck holder with what I think were Rollerblade lock mechanisms, and I was unable to move my head at all.  She also strapped my arms to my sides so, you guessed it, I wouldn't claw my way out of the tube, which is what I was already thinking of doing. She then stuffed foam ear plugs into my ears and shoved a turkey baster bulb up into one of my clenched fists.  Once the earplugs had expanded in my ear canals and I couldn't hear anything, she started giving me instructions.

"Squeeze the bulb if you need to come out at any point during the procedure."

"What?"

"The test takes about an hour."

"What?"

The woman left the room and I started to hear mechanical noises. My buttocks clenched as the tray slid slowly into the coffin tube.  I kept my eyes closed until the tray stopped moving, then took a peek.

My face was so close to the top end of the coffin tube that if I had one more inch of tongue, I could have licked it. My own breath on my hot face made me grateful that I had brushed my teeth.  Then a fan started blowing fresh air against my face.

The machine started to buzz and click and hum, and I closed my eyes and began to enact my MRI Sanity Plan  -- I started visualizing my entire life in detail, from the first moment I could remember.  The magnetic pull of the machine started to do strange things to the images I saw underneath my eyelids.  I was all the way into my first day of Kindergarten, where I was smelling my long, brand new cable knee socks and Buster Brown shoes, when the humming stopped and started and stopped again.  I opened my eyes and saw that it was completely dark in the windowless room. 

"Surely, she'll come for me,"  I thought.  I couldn't hear anything because of the earplugs, and I couldn't move my arms to unstrap my neck and slide myself out.

The only sound I heard was the ringing in my own ears and after a few moments, my heart pounding in my chest.  I started to count my heartbeats.  After about three hundred heartbeats, the woman came back in and shouted something at me that I couldn't hear.  She gave me a thumbs up and an "OK" sign, then left again.

The lights flickered, then went out, then flickered. The machine began to hum and vibrate, then....nothing. 

I waited.

I waited.

I waited, thinking, "No one would leave someone stuck in an MRI machine.  Right?"  My heartbeat answered me.  I began to squeeze the turkey baster bulb over and over.

The woman came back in and shrieked, "Look,  I'm rebooting the whole system.  If we stop now, we'll lose everything and you'll have to come back again.  Can you hang in there five more minutes?"

I shrieked back, "YES!" and closed my eyes to wait.  I will not freak out I will not freak out I will not freak out I will not freak out, and when I did not, I realized that I wasn't in danger and it wasn't so bad.  All it took was a little mental control to stay put --simply stay put and not move -- which brought me to one of my favorite child-rearing themes -- raising children who have self--discipline.

How do we raise children who are able to discipline themselves, to put their needs before their desires and become the kind of adults who don't freak out?

We make them wait for rewards.  We let natural consequences happen - -a far better teacher than a nagging mother or father.  We model self discipline by saying aloud things like, "I'm really going to enjoy reading my book once I've finished the dishes."  We don't bail them out unless they really need a hand, preferring instead to let them extricate themselves out of little pickles they get into during the course of growing up.

I struggle with self-discipline.  I really do.  Sometimes I call it "ADD," sometimes I call it "overwork," or "fatigue," and sometimes I call it "laziness." Of all my faults, lack of self-discipline may be my worst one. I struggle, okay, suck at naturally modeling it for my children.  I have to fake it much of the time, and do things that aren't natural for me, like finish one book before I start another, or worse -- keep from cussing when I get angry. Strangely, this actually makes me more self-disciplined.  Even at my "advanced" age, I can work to improve it in myself, and strive to be a better example.  This is so important.  I'll say it again: your children are your mirror.  What you do, they will copy.

I waited patiently without moving in that MRI machine for 30 more minutes, while the technician worked to reboot the system.  It never did work, and I never did freak out.  I waited calmly and thought about my life.  Somewhere around my 9th grade dance, where I slow danced with a tall, smooth Senior to a Lionel Richie song, the woman and another tech manually slid me out from the machine, and I had to go back another day.  But I had a cool story about keeping my cool when I went home that night, even though my neck still hurt and I had a pulled muscle from the uncontrollable buttock clenching.

Child Torture in the Spirit of Fun!

Two of our five kids are all about fun.  They learn differently than the rest of our kids. They retain information when they are having fun, not when they are promised fun after the learning is over.  Although all kids enjoy learning when the activities are fun, there are some learners, probably kinesthetic ones, who learn best when you whip a beanbag at their heads for each wrong answer, or let them read while dangling upside down, putting their heads where their bottoms should go, and their feet straight up a wall.  These kids like being timed, they like drills, competition, and the challenge of a predictable event ( one extra M&M in their stack for each right answer, one M&M eaten by you, from their stack, while they watch, when they get a wrong answer) and so on.  You have to keep it light -- whipping a beanbag at someone can be done in the spirit of fun!

It is not surprising to know that these two children are also competitive is sports and both have been major contributors to several different teams.  Not only do they learn through playing, but they play when they are bored -- appreciating word games or puzzles or riddles on long car trips, "Quiz Nights" during supper, and races to see who gets done with unpleasant jobs the fastest, bestest, or with the mostest style. They are also the children who are the most sensitive to discipline.  A hard look of displeasure from us could reduce them to quiet tears, and time-outs were pointless -- the would just play.  If you took away everything, they would play with carpet fuzz, or threads, or their own eyelashes.  Aside from "hitting them where it hurts"  you could also hit them where it hurts by taking away their favorite activities. They care so much about doing the right thing that by the time each of them was ten, they almost self-corrected.  Along with the tackling, tickling, competition and beanbag whipping, they require a gentle tone of voice, quiet explanations sometimes days later, and a thoughtful disciplining of their puppy-like ways.

Parents often make the mistake of correcting the essence out of these learners, telling them to "smarten up," "pay attention," "focus,"  "stop messing around," "quit clowning, "sit still," and so on.  It is a shame to squash this playful spirit, and akin to trying to make a dog meow.  It is not in their nature.

Sure, you can force them to sit and study quietly, to "knock it off" and get the work done first, but that takes some of the joy away from their very nature, turning them, instead, into children who learn to view study and work as a terrible chore they will spend much of their time avoiding. It's hard to get into a good college or be an asset to any employer when you shut down at the first sign of work.

What you should do with these children is identify how they best learn and work, and help cultivate that in your home,

Work along side of them. Make it fun.  Dictate or list as little as possible:

• If we get done with this weeding in 20 minutes, we'll have time for a Slurpee.

• Balance on the exercise ball without your feet touching the floor once and recite the entire poem.  If you touch, you have to do it again.

• I'll bet you can't finish this bedroom in 20 minutes and still pass a "white glove test."

• Do your best Zebra/Gibbon/Ronald Reagan impression while we fold this laundry.

• I'll bet you can vacuum up more carpet fuzz than last Saturday, since the dog was in here twice as much as last week.

Now, to some children, specifically two others of ours, making them balance on a ball while reciting a poem isn't a challenge, it's a punishment, and whipping a beanbag at their heads is downright cruelty. Kids, even in the same family, need to be treated as individuals.

You have to know what floats your child's boat.

Rats!

We once had rats in our attic.  Living in a neighborhood surrounded by canals that lead to the ocean, this is not an uncommon experience, nor is it an indicator that we live in filth, although we actually do at times because we have a Labrador Retriever.  If you know that breed of dog, you know that it's not our fault. It's a filthy, filthy breed, what with the hair droppage, mouth leakage, and chronic yeasty ears that plague my hausfrau sensibilities enough to make me want give him away at times, even though I adore him.

This Labrador, although genetically tweaked to find animals in brush, hedges, fields and bodies of water, could not have cared less that we had a debauched bevy of rats partying like it was 1999 in our attic at all times of the day and night. He was of no help. I must also mention that it was one hundred and fifty degrees in the attic during the day, and we don't know how they didn't melt, and the perimeter of the property was patrolled by a busy Cairn Terrier, who cared very much that rats had invaded his land holding, and was hellbent on shaking each and every one of them, so we don't even know how they got there in the first place.  The terrier was humiliated, and confused by why he could smell them but not see them, so he barked constantly, racing from room to room at all hours of the day and night.

After a few sleepless nights of partying, whereby we could hear the rats hauling food away from our pantry and up to the attic, they turned up the Barry White and we could hear their little mattresses thumping.  It was time to do something.

My husband read about a wonderful concept of rat poison that, once ingested would cause the rats to experience an enormous thirst and race away from the house in search of water before they died under a bush somewhere off our property. We planted this rat poison around in strategic places and waited.

One day.

Two days.

It is possible that the malt liquor they may have been consuming reacted with the poison, because when they ate the poison, they never made it to water, but just fell over very quietly dead right there in the attic, without any time to call 911. We hadn't a clue that they had died.  We took the silence to mean that they had left in search of relief from the promised cotton mouth, and expired, as planned, without us having to see them, hopefully under the Stashewksy's back deck.  About five days later we suspected that our rattucide theories were faulty when we started to smell something mysterious and unpinnable, yet able to cause nausea among our entire household.

My husband and I took a couple of flashlights and bandannas and some rubber dish gloves, and headed up the the attic, expecting to have to flip a few rats into a plastic trash bag. But it was something else entirely.

It looked like Jonesville up there.  Tiny little bloated, mostly liquid rat carcasses were scattered in several places around the attic, in various states of decomposition. I dry-heaved until I hyperventilated, all the while thinking about how to get  liquid rat out of yards of fiberglass insulation.

What does this have to do with parenting, you ask?  Here's where I reminisce about the strange and  horrible things we parents do to our children, things we are sure will warp them, but actually end up turning them into something better than they would have been without the experience.

Our attic was so narrow in places that neither my husband nor I could wedge even our shoulders in to get to a few ample carcasses. 

"Hey, kids," my husband hollered down the attic hole. "Send up whoever is smallest. Get in long pants and long sleeves and bring a shovel."

"Aw no fair, she always gets to do the fun stuff!" the younger ones cried. The teenagers, suspecting what they had escaped, gratefully gathered the required items and shoved the very small child up the hole without saying a word, lest we remember that they were down there and possibly well-suited to scraping some carcass.

Up popped a delighted five-year old, with twinkling eyes,two missing teeth and big, fluffy pigtails, looking for the time of her life. She held a little shovel in her sticky fist, and said, "Here I am! What are we gonna do?"

We shot straight with her.

"There are dead rats in this attic.  Because they ate rat poison, and because it is so hot up there, their bodies are turning to jelly.  We are too big to reach some of them.  You have to crawl into the tiny corners and use this shovel to shovel the dead rats into this garbage bag.  If we can, we'll hold it for you.  We have to get them all the first time, and we won't ever do this again."

"Ew," was all she said, and then got to work, matter-of-factly, scooping up carcasses in the tight edges of the attic.  We hunted with the flashlight, pointed her toward them, lay on our stomachs and held the bag for her when we could reach, and cheered her on each time she bagged one.

This was a terrible thing to ask of anyone, let alone a pig-tailed princess who wore Little Mermaid panties and who, fifteen minutes before, was happily playing with her Polly Pocket dolls. It was very hot up there. The rats were liquefied and swollen and dripped when you scooped them. They smell was like nothing we had ever smelled before. The child worked like a full grown woman, doing a job most adults couldn't handle, and did it without a single complaint.

Here's why:

• We didn't let her hear us complain or even suspect we had a bad attitude
• We did the job as a team
• We shot straight with her about what needed to be done
• We kept the atmosphere positive and pleasant at all times
• We had a history of not nagging or complaining or criticizing the children when we asked them for help

Children take on the attitude of the adults around them.  In most cases, they will do whatever it is you are doing with the same attitude you exhibit, no matter what it is.

If you are overwhelmed with housework and begin to complain, guess what they will do next time they are faced with chores they are not in the mood for?

If your car breaks down on the side of the road, are you going to cuss and throw a tantrum, or play word games by the side of the road until help comes?  It depends on what you want your children to one day do when they are handed an inconvenience.

This matter-of-fact attitude works for trying new foods, unpleasant medical procedures, taking nasty medicine, and many other experiences that have the potential to reveal character.  You don't want to raise a weak, whiny brat. You want to raise a person who gets the job done, no matter how rotten of a job it is.

Remember that your child is your mirror.

Some time later, when the job was finished and we were heading down the attic ladder, the child turned to me, wet with sweat, and said,"Those rats ate poison?"

"Yes, dear heart, don't ever eat poison."

"I won't," she nodded solemnly.

Seven years later the child is a delight and remains happy and healthy and unmarred from the rat incident.  She still wants to be a vet.