Seventy-Five Minutes in the Tube

I am not claustrophobic.

Let me start there.

Elevators? Fine. Airplanes? Fine. MRI tubes? Historically, fine.

Open-water swim starts with elbows flying at my face while someone kicks my ribs and a wetsuit strangling my neck? Also fine.

When I laid down on the table, my biggest concern was embarrassingly mundane: I should’ve taken a pee break.

That was the dominant thought. Not fear. Not dread. Just mild logistical regret. Twenty-two minutes is manageable. I’ve done it before. You lie still, listen to what sounds like a robot building a skyscraper around your skull, and you’re done.

Except this one wasn’t twenty-two minutes.

Neurology had forgotten to authorize the cervical spine. So what was supposed to be routine turned into seventy-five minutes in the tube.

No dramatic announcement. Just more sequences. More noise. More stillness.

At first, it was fine.

Then I started getting hot.

Not “this room needs better ventilation” hot.

Internal hot.

It began like a dimmer switch turning slowly upward inside my spine. A warmth that didn’t sit on my skin but lived deeper, along the cord itself. It crept upward and downward at the same time. A strange, spreading heat that felt electrical.

This is where multiple sclerosis enters the story.

MS damages myelin — the fatty insulation wrapped around nerve fibers. Myelin isn’t decoration. It allows electrical signals to travel quickly and efficiently down an axon. Strip some of that insulation away, and the signal still travels — but less reliably, like a frayed extension cord.

Now add heat.

When body temperature rises — even by half a degree Celsius — ion channels in nerve membranes behave differently. Electrical conduction slows. In healthy, fully insulated nerves, that’s barely noticeable. In demyelinated fibers, it can mean the difference between a signal making it through or failing entirely.

This is called Uhthoff’s phenomenon. It isn’t new damage. It’s temporary worsening of symptoms because overheated, poorly insulated nerves conduct even worse than usual.

In simple terms: my wiring already runs on thin margins. Heat narrows the margin further.

MRI machines don’t “cook” you, but they use radiofrequency energy pulses to excite hydrogen atoms so they can be imaged. Some of that energy is absorbed as heat. It’s monitored. It’s within safety limits. For most people, it’s a non-event.

For someone with demyelinated nerve fibers, it can feel like your nervous system is quietly short-circuiting.

The warmth climbed. My back felt like it was radiating from the inside out. I could feel anxiety rising, but it wasn’t claustrophobia. I wasn’t afraid of the space.

I was afraid of my own physiology.

Signals felt less crisp. My body felt less trustworthy. I kept telling myself: You are safe. This is temporary. It’s just heat.

But logic has limited jurisdiction once your nervous system starts flashing warning lights and you’re internally begging to get the hell out.

And somewhere in the metallic pounding of the machine, another memory surfaced.

Two days after the ER misdiagnosed me with Bell’s Palsy, I was certain I could see loud sounds.

Doors closing too hard made my field of vision vibrate. Sharp voices caused a subtle shimmer, like the air itself was trembling.

It lasted an entire day.

I never told anyone.

At the time, I dismissed it. Stress. Fatigue. Imagination. It didn’t fit the story I tell about myself — rational, analytical, grounded. So I buried it.

But lying there in the heat, with my nervous system misfiring under radiofrequency pulses, I understood something I hadn’t before.

Inflammation bends perception.

The brain under stress does strange, precise things.

And that day wasn’t madness.

It was wiring under load.

Somewhere along the way, I completely forgot about the pee situation.

That problem evaporated.

When your spinal cord feels like it’s slowly overheating, bladder logistics drop way down the priority list.

Seventy-five minutes is not an MRI. It’s an endurance event without a pacing strategy.

Then came the contrast.

The staff was kind. Professional. Calm. This isn’t about them. They did everything right.

But when they finally slid me out, I was done.

I walked straight out to my car. No small talk. No debrief. Just movement.

I made a beeline across the parking lot in my t-shirt, ripping off the hospital wristband as I went. The cool air hit me like medicine. It felt like someone had opened a window inside my spine.

I got into the driver’s seat, closed the door, and grabbed the steering wheel.

And then I broke.

Not dramatically. Not loudly. Just sudden tears. A little trembling. The kind that surprises you.

The strangest part was that I wasn’t entirely sure why.

I wasn’t in acute pain anymore. The heat had subsided. The scan was over. Everyone had been competent and kind. There was no obvious trigger.

But something in me had been holding steady for seventy-five minutes — negotiating with my own nervous system, trying to remain composed while my body felt less and less reliable.

When the external demand ended, the internal dam gave way.

I cried into the steering wheel because I think I finally felt the weight of it.

This is happening to me.

Not in theory. Not as a clinical concept. Not as a family story from another generation.

Me.

Heat isn’t just uncomfortable when you have MS. It’s a reminder that the rules of your body have changed. That the margin for error is thinner. That things other people barely register — summer days, hot showers, long scans — can quietly tip the scales.

By nightfall, I was still replaying it while trying to be present for our daughter’s birthday dinner. The creeping warmth. The near-panic without walls. The moment in the car when I realized I couldn’t fully explain my own breakdown.

Maybe that’s part of it too.

MS isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it’s just a slow rise in temperature and the realization that endurance alone doesn’t solve everything.

I’m still not claustrophobic.

But now I understand that panic doesn’t require walls.

Sometimes it just requires heat.