Overture in Ow Major

If my pain had a sound, it would be the pulsing hum of an MRI machine.

I went into one when I was ten, maybe eleven. I’d been in and out of Children’s Hospital appointments for nearly a year, diagnosed with minor scoliosis for two, and stuck with doctors scratching their heads at my constant back pain for long enough that the smell of lemons always made me think of hospital hand sanitizer. X-rays. Physiotherapy. A CT scan. Eventually, all that was left was an MRI.

Inside, the MRI was bright and confined, the roof so close to my body that I couldn’t stretch my arms out in front of me. A gown that felt like 1-ply toilet paper separated me from the chill of the table while the machine rattled my body with its noise. It clicked and groaned and grumbled for an hour straight, and I put the noises to beats and music in my head as I struggled to breathe. 

I think the sounds of all my pain—before and since, chronic or otherwise—are in the distorted symphony from that machine. 

Violin Concerto in Falling Down the Stairs

I broke my nose in the first grade because I wanted to see how far I could lean out over the stairs before falling. Not very far, it turns out. I skidded down on my belly and cracked my face onto the floor. This pain is a violin. It’s at the front of the orchestra, the story I tell the most because I think there’s a relatability in my childhood stupidity. It’s the ache of a swollen nose and the cool relief of frozen blueberries pressed against it by warm hands. Hard. Comforting.

French Horn Concerto in Falling Down the Stairs — Movement II

Two years later, I fell down the stairs again, on my back this time, gripping a pet rock I’d painted as a bee for Father’s Day. The edge of the unfinished wooden stairs scraped my skin the whole way down, but I didn’t drop the rock. 

When I think of the French horn, I think of the scene in Star Wars when Luke Skywalker stares out at the twin suns on his home planet, Tatooine. The French horn is a trumpet twirled in on itself like a curly fry. Imagine, if you can, the sound that rings in your ears when you realize your parents, your little cousins, your pets, are getting older. Star Wars makes me think of my dad, who makes me think of my mom, who makes me think of my brother, who all make me worry that I can’t show my love beyond not dropping a rock while plummeting down the stairs.

Piccolo Etude in Did I Piss Off the God of Falling?

On a camping trip the summer before fifth grade, I tripped over a bathroom mat and broke my arm. My cast stretched from my wrist to above my elbow so that I couldn’t shove pencils in to scratch itches in the middle of my arm. My art teacher painted a section of Starry Night on it that the doctor sawed through when he cut the cast off. Something sharp cutting through something beautiful. The piccolo, a mini flute, somehow shriller.

Recess Bell 

In the fourth and fifth grades, I spent each day begging the recess bell to ring faster. 

Recess tended to isolate me, not exactly because I was friendless, but because my body simply didn’t let me participate in the standard, non-isolating childhood activities. I couldn’t run or even jump without pain burning its way up my spine, always striking hard enough that I had to stop, stand still, take a breath. You cannot stop, stand still, take a breath if you want to be of any use during a game of tag. 

Every day, I’d walk on the dirt track circling my school’s field—twice during recess, three or four times during lunch—and then I’d stand outside my classroom door to wait for the bell, daydreaming of transforming into various animals, usually horses, so that I could run away from the school and my medical mystery spine to some open meadow where I could be alone without having to watch other children be together.

The horse transformation never came. I’m still working on the pain-free running.

Intermission

Thirty minutes into the MRI scan, the doctor’s voice crackled over a speaker, and she asked me if I was okay. 

She’d told me before I went in that I could leave the machine at any time; I’d just have to do it again another day. I could think of nothing worse than having to do it again, besides maybe the upcoming The Hunger Games movie being bad.

I told her I was okay. I wondered if she could see parts of my brain light up with the lie. The symphony continued.

Christmas Performance by Fourth Graders on Recorders

When I was fourteen, a different chronic pain developed deep in my lower body, which was not as constant as whatever was wrong with my back, but much more cutting. 

As you live in a body that seems broken and mad at you, it’s hard to think of music. So, think of that little plastic wind instrument called the recorder that entranced elementary schools everywhere. Or worse, a recorder choir of fourth graders who only learned to play four notes. You smile through it. You want to run through a wall.

Bassoon Sonata in Diagnosis 

I got diagnoses for my lower body pain seven years after it first appeared, one nerve condition, one musculature. When I told my doctor that the pain felt like a knife being shoved inside me, he looked almost bored as he replied that he’d heard that expression from people with my conditions before. It didn’t really make me feel better. There’s a sad satisfaction in learning a diagnosis. You weren’t making up the pain. Now you know it may not be curable. 

A bassoon played in the back of my head as I left that appointment. It’s a tall woodwind instrument I played in my high school band. Imagine the sound of a fart, now imagine the saddest sound you’ve ever heard. You have two thumbs and bassoons have thirteen thumb keys. It’s the only thing you really miss about high school.

Organ Music Coming From Inside an Old Church

Pipe organs, like the ones found in large churches or concert halls, are part instrument, part building. Thousands of pipes slide along walls to shoot down into basements or up into ceilings like metal tree roots and branches. The booming sounds they produce shake the entire structure so that you can hear the organ music from outside. 

When you press a key on an organ, the note played is continuous, a straight wave of sound that endures until you lift your finger. My pain is a constant hum, deep and familiar. It’s often something that I can ignore or hide away, simmering in the background until something tugs it forward—standing too long, stress, tight pants, using a tampon, exercising too little, exercising too much—and it bubbles over, spitting out through the church windows and up the spire and spilling into the air and to the streets below.

Finale in Living With Pain

The doctors found no cause for my back pain in that MRI. They decided that maybe I was too anxious or imagining it. They sent me to a psychologist who recorded voice memos on my iPod Touch. In the recordings, the psychologist talked me through an underwater world where I was a mermaid. Between descriptions of my mermaid tail and dolphin friends, she told me to take deep breaths, to tighten and release every muscle in my body piece by piece. I was supposed to listen to the recording every time I was in pain, but the pain was always there, and I got bored of trying to be a mermaid to escape it. Eventually, I deleted the recording. I listened to the new One Direction album instead. 

Encore

The pain stays. If you’re quiet, you can hear the orchestra from the MRI warming up. They’re never quite in tune. 

---

Luscha Makortoff lives near Vancouver and is a Simon Fraser University graduate. She is currently a technical writer by day, but her true passions are reading too many books at once, sharing historical facts with anyone who will listen, and writing fantastical stories. You can find her work in The /tƐmz/ Review.