Don't fence me in

It is fine until they push me head first into the machine. My head is right in the middle of it and they've lowered a metal grill over my face.

For a few seconds I consider pressing the alarm button as the thought 'let me out, let me out, let me out' overwhelms me.

I close my eyes, take deep steady breaths and will away the panick. 'Are you claustrophobic?' they'd asked on the questionnaire. 'No,' I had answered. But later I remembered feeling uncomfortable in bunk beds on boats, or buses.

In my ears, the tinny sound of bad headphones brings me Radio 2. Bad timing: it's the news, followed by that cut up version of What the World Needs Now. That's going to trigger unrest for the rest of my life.

'We're going to start. The first scan lasts 30 seconds,' the nice lab technican tells me. She'd put a blanket over my legs for comfort and said not to yell. 'We can't hear you.' Great. When I answer her questions, my voice sounds very, very small.

The noise, even through the headphones, is deafening but comforting. The way a heartbeat would be. I try to think happy thoughts, but cannot focus on anything. I stick to breathing deeply.

My face itches. Don't move. You can't move, because it ruins the scans. I wonder if I'm allowed to wiggle my toes. I do it anyway, just to move something.

'The second scan takes 2 minutes.'

Two minutes appear quite long. The next couple of scans are even longer. 'A sequence of 3 minutes, 4 minutes and 2 minutes.'

Behind the machine hangs a horrible Bob Ross type painting of a seascape with dolphins. I can see it via a mirror placed over my head. But I don't open my eyes very often, it's easier to disregard the confinement with my eyes closed.

Finally the noise stops. A second lab technician frees me from the machine. I look around for the first one, but she's gone. For some reason, this is disorientating.

'You can go, you don't have to wait.'

I seem ok, so I go to work, but I'm exhausted. So much so, I go straight to bed when I get home and sleep for ten hours.