I swear the temperature drops 10 degrees upon entering the procedure room. The thin johnny does little to stop the goosebumps from rising all over my body. I can’t keep my eyes from lingering over the procedure table that my body will soon be draped on and all the machinery situated around the room that likely costs more than half a million dollars. 

Nothing in this room has changed in the last four months, and I take a mild sense of comfort in that. Because so much in my own life has.

I should be terrified for this procedure, but I’m not. This has become routine for me. This is the room where everything changed for me. After a year and a half of rapid decline, the people and machinery in this room gave something to me that my 19-year-old self desperately needed: hope.

My mom transfers me to the table she and the nurses position me onto my side so that the radiologist has ample access to my lumbar spine. The tech smears layers of betadine on my back. The smell of it is the only point in the procedure that can make me nauseated because it can take me right back to the day five years ago where that fragile hope was almost taken from me.

It had been four months since my last injection, and the only point of entry that had been miraculously untouched from my spinal fusion had scarred over. I had spent three to four hours on the procedure table that day as the interventional radiologist poked around my spinal column, trying valiantly to find that point of access that was no longer there. My heart sinking with every minute that passed.

The medication that had helped me so much already was now going to be impossible to get into my intrathecal space. However, my genius doctors came up with a plan. Rather than relying on an existing hole, they could create one by tunneling into my fusion to access my cerebral spinal fluid.

My doctors had never done a procedure like this before, but they were convinced that because I had tolerated them poking around my spine that I would be able to handle it. I was 19 years old and terrified about not having access to the medication that saved my life, so I did what I had to: I agreed. It was hardly the first time that I would be the guinea pig for something, and I knew — deep down — my body could handle it, frankly, because I had no other option.

Once I’m fully prepped, my mom sets up my DVD player — queuing up “The Devil Wears Prada” or “Sex & the City” — to distract me momentarily. Everyone assumes their position. The radiologist begins the timer as he marks his point of access, and if Sex & the City is the choice of the day, he typically makes a comment about Aidan or Big, which always ensures a giggle from me. He then pierces the chosen spot with a generous amount of Lidocaine and the show officially begins.

I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you, because going through this procedure is not a piece of cake by any means. In fact, the procedure — which happens three times a year — is only getting more complicated and painful as time goes on. Because — and at the risk of coming across all medical jargon-y here — when they first started doing these procedures, they were drilling into my fusion, which wasn’t my actual bone. But now my body has been developing a lot of scar tissue to protect itself which, as you can imagine, makes the experiences really pain-free.

But even though the experiences of these procedures are not exactly pleasant, I’m not afraid of them. My anxiety stems from situations where I don’t know what the outcome is going to be. But I know what to expect from these procedures. Every time I enter Boston Children’s Hospital, I know that everyone there is trying to help me and sustain my quality of life.

I have been going to this hospital since I was 10 months old, and the ironic thing is that I can recall very few moments within those walls where I was genuinely scared. Because most of my doctors have been by my side since I was a little girl.

Outside of the hospital has always been a different story, because even though I almost perished after a complication from one of my spinal surgeries when I was 7, there have been more things in the real world that have tried to break me. And several things recently have almost succeeded.

I have always been an anomaly, in a lot of ways, and I guess this is just another one. This past month and a half, I have encountered some health issues so I have spent a lot of time ruminating on this topic. Because most children who grew up in hospitals are traditionally traumatized by them.

But for me, going through those doors seems feels like a strange coming home.

Gazette columnist Joanna Buoniconti is a freelance writer and editor. She is currently pursuing her master’s at Emerson College. She can be reached at columnist@gazettenet.com.