After discussing we’ve discovered the problem isn’t directly with calling $wpdb->get_row but a mismatch between the data it returns and the processing in the foreach loop.
For a single row of data, replacing…
foreach($beforeAfter as $imageSet) { ?>
<item>
<title><?php echo get_the_title($imageSet->ID); ?></title>
</item>
<?php }
… with …
<item>
<title><?php echo get_the_title($imageSet->ID); ?></title>
</item>
… stops the feed erroring.
Or for multiple rows you could adjust your query.