I'm Starting to Fray

Okay, that's not really me, because I'm not blond. Other than that, that's me in the picture. Except my knees weren't bent and my arms were extended straight back above my head with an IV sticking out of the right one.

This is a long story which I'm not going to tell right now. I'm just going to start it from today, when I had my big date with the CT machine.

7:00 am Arrive at Orem Community Hospital
7:01 am Start getting teary
7:30 am Special Delivery of six 6oz. cups of contrast dye mixed with cranberry juice with instructions to drink one every ten minutes. Yum! (not)
8:45 am Am finally called in where I am told that a new CT scanner is being installed so I will be walking through the parking lot in my lovely hospital gown to a CT scanner in a trailer. I check, but they're not kidding. I do get scrub pants and a blanket, but I still feel like a dork.
9:00 am I'm lying on the scanning bed while she figures out how to work this new machine. Then she sticks an IV line in my arm which HURTS a lot. I start to cry.
9:10 am Still crying
9:15 am Still crying, mixed with apologies. I blame it on stress, but I'm starting to think it's true, naked fear coming out.

The woman who did my scan could not have been kinder to me. Her husband has cancer and she is very sensitive to how scary everything is. Not that I have cancer. That's kind of the point. I don't know what I have. I would love to think it's nothing at all. I am inclined to think it's "something." She wiped away my tears so I didn't have to move my arms. Another woman popped in and stroked one of my hands. Lovely, lovely women. So comforting. But I was still scared out of my wits that this could be the start of a new reality for me.

I thought of my dad, which always makes me cry anyway, and know that he doesn't want this for me. Of course, no parent wants this for their child. But he REALLY doesn't want this for me, because this is his reality and has been for a very long time. I thought of Sheri Mower, and of course thought that I know very well how this whole thing could end. I should take courage from Sheri, but I don't. I thought of my whole family, and how if my genes betray me, what could that mean for all of them? I really don't want to be the weak link here.

And then I just stopped crying. I remembered that my tears aren't going to fix a thing, that I'm close to hysterical at this point and should probably be slapped--hard. I knew that my sister Suzanne would probably volunteer to do it, because she's tough and I am too, even though I'm not feeling it at the moment.

9:20 am No longer crying, scan is over, walk back to hospital, change.
9:45 am Home again
9:50 am Passed out cold on my bed

I'll get results on Thursday morning, hopefully.