CT Scan

Tomorrow morning I'll go in for my second CT scan. We'll get a report mid-week, and then I'll know if Fred has grown or receded in the three months since the last test. Some part of my brain is cold and shuddering. I'm afraid.

It's odd to have such a fear of bad news mixed with a non-frightening medical procedure. I'll be getting 14 times the amount of radiation than I'd have with an X-ray, but there's no pain or awareness of the radiation. I've already had the contrast chemical dropped into my blood, so I know I'm not allergic. It's nothing too hard. I'll get up, get over there and go through the paperwork, the shuffle from office to office, and the strangeness of having people I've never met take me through a process while I'm dressed in a flimsy hospital gown.

My life and death question doesn't fit into this impersonal medical world. So, I want a chorus of wailers with me. I want their voices to rise and fall in discordant cacophony then steady to a soothing it's all gonna be okay hum. I want them to alternate one state for another from the moment my alarm goes off and through several days of waiting until I get off the phone with the results of the preliminary radiologist's report. Then I want them to stop.