The attendant at the American Hospital in Paris did not speak English. I do not speak French. We shared almost no common words, yet I felt safe and cared for.
I lay flat on my back inside the $3 million Siemens Healthineers imaging machine, ready for a cardiac MRI stress test.
Suited up in an electrode vest and headset, I imagined myself an astronaut aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft.
My French health attendant was running Mission Control.
In my left hand, I held onto an emergency kill switch, in case I freaked out. Like a push button at a crosswalk, I wondered if it actually worked.
When I entered the long white tube, the breathing instructions came in English, a voice that sounded like Brad Pitt in the baseball movie Moneyball.
There’s a dark comedy about how we experience cutting-edge technology. You are lying on your back in a chilly white tube, clutching a panic button, while listening to a movie star tell you when to breathe.
The test took an hour, 30 minutes longer than normal. The cardiologist on duty wanted another look.
That silence. What do you do with an hour inside a tube?
Fear. Negotiation with mortality. Inventory of your life. Plan a delicious lunch. You’re lying inside a space-age machine designed to extend life, wondering if your heart is still doing its job.
Then, relief. Rolling out of the tube gave me the same satisfying sensation as the doors finally opening in a janky elevator.
My heart is fine, its efficiency is improving. My doctors credit my lifestyle changes and heart meds, and that might be it. But our bodies’ ability to heal is a miracle in itself.
The technology keeping us alive is another miracle.
This is a guest essay from Livelong Media founder, Brad Inman.
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