Chapter 3

MARCH

The MRI That Wasn’t

When it came time for my next appointment with Dr. Godin, I felt like I had accomplished something. I had gone with the whole family to Asia for Jim’s tour over spring break and I’d packed the Flonase. I had totally completed the online auditory exercise program. (In English, of course.) The problem was, the hearing in my left ear had not changed one bit. This time I was honest during the hearing test. I was basically deaf in my left ear. The doctor came into the room promptly after the test. I happily reported that I’d completed the entire listening program he had prescribed and did he know of a good Flonase rehab program?

He looked at the results of the latest hearing test, looked inside my ear again, and sat in silence for a beat. After an awkward pause, he explained to me that my hearing functions appeared to be normal, and that sometimes there is something in the inner ear that he cannot see through the otoscope (the medical name for the ear-looker thing). In very rare instances, there may be something small blocking the internal auditory canal. But that’s very rare, like ten in one million. The only way to see if there was anything in there was through an MRI scan. Sure, I said. Why not? Another appointment to schedule. Hope they can get me in soon. I guess I’ll start playing phone tag with another medical office for the next three weeks. He explained that I didn’t have to make an appointment. He would just write me a prescription, and then I would show up at a radiology center, check in, and wait. Sounded simple. I would just go early in the morning when no one else was there. Appointments at 9 a.m. are my absolute preference.

Jiminy Cricket

My mornings go something like this:

6:00 a.m.: Wake up to iPhone alarm, hit Snooze.

6:10 a.m.: Wake up to iPhone alarm, hit Snooze.

6:20 a.m.: Wake up to iPhone alarm, tempted to hit “Snooze.”

6:25 a.m.: Babysitter enters and tells me to stop hitting Snooze.

6:30 a.m.: Drink coffee and stare.

6:40 a.m.: Panic that five kids need to eat breakfast, brush teeth, do hair, get in uniforms, find their shoes and backpacks (I have helpers, don’t worry).

7:00 a.m.: Get picked up by Sixto car pool. My kids are the whole car pool.

7:30 a.m.: Drop off Marre at her middle school on East Ninety-Seventh Street.

7:37 a.m.: Drop off Katie at her school on East Eighty-Second Street.

7:40 a.m.: Cross Central Park on Seventy-Ninth Street down the West Side Highway to Chelsea.

7:55 a.m.: Get dropped off with the three boys, take Jack and Michael into school.

8:10 a.m.: Take Patrick down the street to the second-floor Early Learning Center. Play with blocks while we wait for his teacher to open the doors, then do “Kissing Hands.” We kiss each other’s palms and put the kiss in our pockets to save for later if we are having a bad day.

8:30 a.m.: Totally done with drop-offs. Now I am sans kids until 3:30 p.m.

The sprint has begun to get anything at all accomplished in the next seven hours.

Since we made the brutal decision to end The Jim Gaffigan Show at the end of season 2 for the sake of not missing our kids grow up, we moved our production company to our home office. I made a commitment to spend more time with my children, which is no better exemplified than by my willingness to commit the 2.5 hours before school to this epic and expensive journey around Manhattan every weekday morning. Even though I’m not at my best in the wee hours, I feel like, in a way, the kids are. Maybe not the crabby eleven-year-old and twelve-year-old, but the little ones are filled with gems (“Mom, am I allergic to baths?”).

I can get to an appointment by 9 a.m. This is simply the best option for me. I can drop off the kids, make it across town to the dentist’s office, get my teeth cleaned, get home and be at my desk at 10 a.m. and have a full day of productivity and clean teeth.

The worst option is a 10 a.m. appointment. Then there is not enough time to get back home and leave again. I have to stay out and find something to do for an hour, and I can’t even run errands to pick up a bag of stuff because:

1. I’ll have to carry the bag of stuff I picked up along with me to the appointment, which inevitably means that I will leave the bag of whatever at the appointment and then spend the rest of my day chasing it down; and

2. nothing in Manhattan opens until 10 or 11 a.m., so I couldn’t pick up the bag of stuff even if I wanted to, because there is no stuff to be bought until 11 a.m.

I imagine that shops in New York used to open at 9 a.m. but then they changed the time because of the shabby customers. Maybe a few moms came in after drop-off in yoga pants with dried toothpaste in the corners of their mouths, and they were like, “We need a classier clientele. You know, the ones who sleep until ten, go to SoulCycle, then hit the showers and salons for a makeover and a blow-out before we open the doors at noon for these decent New Yorkers.” The only things open are the pharmacies. I went into CVS one morning to get something I needed before a 10 a.m. appointment. I spent way too long in there and then left with a bag of stuff I didn’t need, forgetting the thing I went in for, and then ultimately left the bag of other stuff in a cab. I’m not good at killing time. Jim and I are always involved in writing and producing a comedy show or making a film, and a 10 a.m. random appointment upends the whole day. The next day, I go to the radiology center with my “script” (what we insiders call prescriptions), take the elevator to the lower, lower level (for some reason radiology centers are always on the lower, lower level. Trust me, I am now an expert), and go to the front desk where I exchange my script and insurance card for, you guessed it, a clipboard with a stack of forms.

I look around the room and notice that almost everyone in Manhattan also decided that 9 a.m. was the perfect time to come to the radiology center on the lower, lower level. They each have a clipboard of forms. Since I was a pro at filling out forms at this point, I resolved that I was going to fill out my stack quicker than everyone who had arrived before me. It became an imagined competition. The room transformed into an SAT test center, with all of us lip-biting students determined to finish better and faster than the next. That’s when I hit a question that stumped me:

Are you pregnant or is there a possibility you could be pregnant? Y/N

No fair. There is a total sexist disadvantage to the females filling out the forms. All the guys can skip that question. Plus, for me it involves math. Because of my and Jim’s “let go and let God” or, as Jim calls it, the “no goalie” approach to birth control, there is always a possibility I could be pregnant. I had to think. I mean, we weren’t trying, but we weren’t not trying. Also, Jim is out of town a lot, so I really didn’t know. I checked the calendar and I was smack-dab in the middle area where it was too early to take a test. Instead of just “Y/N,” there needed to be an “Other” section. Or a “Maybe.” Even a small essay section would suffice. I could ace this thing. I just needed options. I glanced around the room for a nurse or other medical person. Nothing. I looked up at the front-of-house reception desk and there was an old man yelling at the women behind the desk. I moved up behind him, knowing my unsure-pregnancy question would be a welcome reprieve from this guy.

“I have been here for THREE HOURS!” barked the man. It was only 9:23 a.m. I wondered what time they opened or if the guy was exaggerating. Did he sleep outside last night like he was getting the next iPhone? “I have rights!” he continued. Apparently, he’d had enough time to read the Patient’s Bill of Rights at the bottom of the stack of forms. I guess he had been there for a while. This was a true New York moment. People just go off here. I grew up in a midsize city, but if you heard more than one siren outside, everyone would come out on their front porches to see what was going on. In New York City, fifteen firetrucks could be blasting down the street and you just turn up the volume for your earbuds. The old guy kept yelling and began to bang his fists on the counter. The unfazed receptionists continued what they were doing (probably entering redundant data from forms) and didn’t even look up at him. “I was here before the last person you called!” His complaining was falling on deaf ears. Or, in my case, deaf ear.

“Sir, there are many different tests that go on here. Patients get called as their specific testing room becomes available.”

“This is RIDICULOUS!” he barked. I thought of how awful it must be (a) to be really old; (b) to be getting a scan for I’m sure nothing good; and (c) to be old, getting a scan for something not good, and waiting for what he perceived as three hours to be scanned for something not good.

I peeped around him. “Hi,” I said to the stern front-of-house person whom I hoped would be happy to see me.

“Can I help you?” she asked, without looking up and in the same tone with which she’d answered the man I felt sorry for one second ago.

“Yes, um, on these forms here, it asks if I could be pregnant, and I don’t think I am at all, but it’s possible, like, not probable, but there is a small, tiny possibility, like, really remote, like, if I was pregnant it would be like, five minutes pregnant. I mean not five minutes, that would be TMI, but like, it would be really, really early. Like, if I did a test now, it would say ‘negative’ even though it might be ‘positive,’ you know? I mean, I could be in the early stages… but I could also just say ‘No’ on the form because I’m not pregnant, to the best of my knowledge, but I could be. You know?” The old man looked at me and rolled his eyes. Now I was the raving lunatic. Maybe I was babbling a tad. The receptionist still didn’t look up.

“We can’t answer any medical questions. Please direct all questions concerning your test to the radiologist.” Right, I thought and sat back down. I looked up at the TV that had no volume. The Chew was on. I’m starving, I thought. I left the question blank and continued to fill out the rest of the form.

Eventually a woman in pink scrubs came out and called my name:

“Janine?”

I didn’t even look around to see if there was coincidentally someone named Janine there. When most people read the name “Jeannie” I guess it just looks like “Janine.” I once had a summer job where I was called Janine for two months because I didn’t want to correct the person. Wait, do Janines get called Jeannie? Maybe if I changed my name to Janine, then people would call me Jeannie. Anyway, the woman in the pink scrubs guided me to the back where there was a row of curtained booths.

“Take off your clothes and all of your jewelry and put it in this bag. Someone will come get you when it’s time for the MRI.” She hurried off. Whatever happened to romance? I realized I’d missed my chance to talk to her.

Now probably wouldn’t be the best time to ask the pregnancy question, I thought. As I struggled to take off my small earrings and necklace, I was mad at myself. Why did I wear jewelry to an MRI? To be fair, I didn’t purposely put it on to attend the MRI like it was the social event of the season. I just never take it off because I’m afraid I’ll lose it. I realized I didn’t know what MRI stood for or what it actually was. I just always thought of it as a glorified x-ray that measures how truly claustrophobic you really are.

However, with all the form questions about having metal implants in one’s body, such as “aneurysm clips” or “bullet or shrapnel wounds,” I could guess that the “M” stood for “magnet,” and if you wore jewelry in the tube, it would be ripped right off. I put the tiny hoop earrings and the Miraculous Medal I never remove (so I won’t lose them) into my shoe (so I won’t lose them). I put on the paper gown and sat shivering in the little curtained booth waiting for the technician. Thankfully, they like to turn up the AC in the areas where you wear the least clothing.

A not-so-short time later, a pleasant-looking man in his forties, with glasses and more hair on his face than his head, approached the booth with the curtain that stopped about six inches shy of actually covering the door. “Hi, I’m ready,” I said, letting him know he could open the curtain because I was decent. He was carrying a clipboard with my forms on it.

“Hi, Ms. (reads) Nawth Griffin?”

“Yes, that’s me. Kind of. It’s actually pronounced ‘Noth,’ like rhymes with ‘both,’ Gaffigan.”

“Do you have any metal in or on your body?” Again with the not reading the forms.

“No, I’m good.” I realized now that this was my chance to explain why I had left that one question blank. Not that anyone noticed. After all, we have already concluded that no one reads these forms. I would have rather asked a woman, but this guy would do. “I do have one question. On those forms, it also asked if I am pregnant. Although I don’t think I am pregnant, there is a slim, slim chance I might be, although it would be way too early to know.” I impressed myself with my ability to consolidate the communication about this after my undeniable similarity to the lunatic in the waiting room. “It’s still okay that I get the MRI, right?” I waited for him to tell me it was fine in his haste to get to the next patient.

“I wouldn’t,” he said easily.

“What?” I was shocked. I had already taken my jewelry off, for God’s sake. I was in the gown and everything. I don’t know why these plastic and paper ponchos are called gowns. When I think gown, it’s evening wear. If calling this thing a gown was an attempt to glamorize the poncho experience, it wasn’t working.

He continued without hesitation: “Even if there is a small chance you could be pregnant, we really don’t know if the test could have an adverse effect on the baby.”

“But there is no baby! I mean, I was just being cautious.”

“Better to be cautious. A lot of things can go wrong at the early stages of pregnancy. I’m sure if you are pregnant, and something goes wrong, you’d hate to think you had something to do with it because you went ahead and got the MRI.”

Wow, who was this guy, Jiminy Cricket? Now, after all that, I couldn’t get an MRI today. Frustration and anger bubbled, followed seconds later by an overwhelming feeling of guilt. How selfish of me. I was totally ignoring the health and well-being of the baby that may not exist, for an MRI that I didn’t even need. So I left with no MRI, grumbling that I hoped Dr. Hops would be happy that her little “assignment” for me had turned into an epic saga.

In a few days it became clear that I was certainly not pregnant. When I called the radiology center, I learned that they had held on to my script, and my forms, so all I had to do was show up, change the date, sign something, and I would be good to go for the MRI. Just knowing it would be that easy to get another MRI, I put it off for another week. It was almost Easter, and I was busy.