“Try not to move while the machine is on…”

I spent this morning in the lovely new GWU Hospital. Gleaming floors, expansive windows, huge Grecian urns and plasma TVs – wow. They really went all out, didn’t they? A far cry from the last time I was there, blood pouring out of a gash in my husband’s eyebrow, the result of his inadvertently walking into a steel staircase at Club Insomnia. That old emergency room was a real pit.

I was there for a CT Scan of my sinuses, a follow-up to my recent allergy testing. Now, I’m seriously claustrophobic. I’ll get off a too-crowded metro train and I cringe fighting through crowded platforms. I have nightmares about tunnels and being buried alive. No joke. So I was fearing this procedure, thinking it would be the one where you have to lie inside a coffin-shaped machine for forty minutes.

But when I entered the room, I saw just a rather silly-looking machine with what looked like a large donut on top. “Piece of cake,” I thought. Until I lie down with my neck immobilized at a weird angle, and then the donut flips over and rotates around until its edge is at my throat like a guillotine blade and all I can see is a whirling thing inside and the bench I’m lying on starts jerking closer and closer until my head is pinioned underneath what is now the Evil Donut Machine from Hell.

But hey, nice improvement to the facilities. I just need a drink now, and it isn’t even noon yet!

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

As one of the founding editors of We Love DC, Jenn’s passions are theater and cocktails. After two decades in the city, she’s loved every quirky, mundane, elegant, rude minute of her DC life. A proud advocate for DC’s talented drinks scene, she’s judged the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s ARTINI contest, the DC Rickey Month contest, the Jefferson Hotel’s Quill Cocktail competition, and is a founding member of LUPEC DC. A graduate of Catholic University’s drama program, she toured the country as a member of National Players, and has been both an actor and a costume designer before jumping the aisle to theater criticism. Writing for We Love DC restored her happiness after a life-threatening illness, and she’s grateful to you, dear readers. Send your suggestions to jenn (at) welovedc (dot) com and follow her on Twitter.

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