Stripped of anything metallic and wearing a thin cotton gown, I feel the hard plank beneath my back slide into the machine. Reminding myself not to move, not even to twitch, I close my eyes and wait for the clanking and buzzing to begin.

You would think I'd be used to this by now, but after two dozen magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, the experience is still equal parts boring and terrifying. Lying silent and still inside this great, cacophonous apparatus, there's not much to do but imagine the worst: more disease, more lost function, more pain.

We have a complicated relationship, this machine and I. Despite my genuine fear and loathing, despite the fact that part of me wants to take a sledgehammer to every single MRI machine in existence and toss the remains into a black hole, I wish we had met five years sooner.

Sixteen years ago, my first scans revealed rare, slow-growing spinal tumors called myxopapillary ependymomas. They were benign, but they had spread from the base of my spine up to my C7 vertebra. If I had been scanned five years earlier, back when the first sharp pains began to wake me up at night, the doctors said I might have been cured with a relatively simple surgery.

Instead, my treatment options were limited: radiation was controversial, chemotherapy hopeless, and the tumors were too advanced to remove completely. In the end I had two marathon surgeries to reduce the size of the tumors. No one—least of all my doctors—thought they would stop growing after the surgeries, but they did. Or at least they have so far. It's a kind of medical miracle, one the MRI confirms for me again and again.

The machine always starts with a long, loud buzzzz, like someone letting me into a secure building. A straightforward series of clicks and clunks follows. Then there's a jumbled mess of sounds: Zzwronnnnnkg. Tukatukatukatuka. A swarm of bees? A jackhammer? A swarm of bees operating a jackhammer?

Lately, I imagine the MRI noises are aliens trying to communicate with me. But what are they saying? Maybe they're telling me the secrets of the universe. Maybe they're giving me the formula for faster-than-light travel. Or maybe, feeling sorry for a creature who can't read her own body, the aliens are just trying to tell me what's happening inside my spine right now.

Even so, the aliens can't tell me the most important things. They can't tell me why the tumors started growing, why they stopped, or if they'll ever start growing again. They can't tell me how to live my life between scans—how to embrace the now while planning for an uncertain future. They can never know the bright turquoise shine of a perfect sailing day or the brilliant, raucous conversations with good friends at two o'clock in the morning. They can't tell me how I managed to marry the kindest person I will ever know, or what we looked like when we got caught in the rain in Prague, laughing as we dashed for the train.

They can only tell me if the tumors are growing. So far, the answer is no. And because they have this information, I go back to see them, year after year. I don't speak their language yet, but I'm learning. And one day, someday, maybe I'll learn how to talk back.

"You don't know me," I might say. "You may have a thousand pictures, but you don't really know me at all."

Ida L. Bostian is the founding director of the Spinal Cord Tumor Association, a nonprofit group dedicated to improving the lives of spinal cord tumor survivors and their families. To learn more about Bostian, her upcoming novel, and her efforts to reduce chronic pain, visit idabostian.com.