Last week...
Monday, February 18, 2008
Last week, and for weeks before that, I was staying up late nights observing the switchboard of minor pains afflicting my stomach and chest. It's a recorded fact I'm prone to ulcers, and something my doctor tells me is called Barrett's esophagus, which may or may not be related to the ulcers, I can't remember, and which has, what? (sometimes I feel as if I'm making these things up) near a 5 per cent chance of giving me cancer. This explains the rodent-like gnawing that crawls between my gut and my sternum. But what else is going on here? Is that swollen basketball behind my ribcage my liver? Are those rheumy, congested things my lungs? Flash of pain beneath the armpit: my heart? Or in back of my jaw: more cancer? I've been doing this pretty much throughout 2008, waiting, holding off seeing the doctor. I've done this before, with the same symptoms, had X-Rays done to my chest, more sonograms than an expectant mother, had them roll all that cold jelly over my stomach and push their weird bat-machine into my ribs. Nothing came up. "Watch it with that coffee, lose a little weight, no smoking," that's what they say. And now that I've finally, in a sort of slow-burning panic, called all of my doctors to get the necessary tests, my symptoms have subsided to a light simmer, and some--the liver, the stomach pains--have gone away almost completely. Am I that kind of person?
posted by Greg Purcell @ 12:05 PM,
