Tomorrow

Tomorrow is a day I've been dreading for awhile. First thing in the morning I head to the hospital for a CT scan of my kidneys to find out if they are normal. The layers of dread are many. For one thing, I have to fast for 3hrs, which doesn't sound that bad to most people, I'm guessing, but I'm a lifelong grazer with a super-high metabolism, and going over an hour w/o eating something tends to make me feel lightheaded. Three hours seems almost insurmountable. I can have clear liquids during those three hours, and I plan to load myself up with apple juice and such to keep my blood sugar from utterly plummeting. Still, that won't be a perfect solution, especially since you're talking about someone with the world's smallest bladder (well, I guess we might find out tomorrow if that's really true!) so the more I drink, the worse my morning will become.

SEcond layer of dread is that I have to get an IV because they'll be injecting me with a contrast dye to better outline my kidneys and such. Besides my icky feeling toward needles, I've been forewarned that the dye itself can make you feel warm and give you a metallic taste in your mouth. If I were a betting person, I would put money on the fact that the combo of those two sensations is gonna make me barf at some point. Anyone care to challenge me? This is one of those times I sincerely hope to be wrong, but I've had weirder reactions to more innocuous drugs and such before, so we shall see.

Third layer: Claustrophobia. I think the CT scan won't be as bad as an MRI (which I've never had, btw, but we've all seen ER and House, thank you very much), but I do have claustrophobia and am not eager to confront this machine. They could give me a sedative for the anxiety, but then I wouldn't be able to drive myself home, and alas, that brings me to layer four....

I'm going alone. Lest you think Ken must be some kind of beast to send me off on such a journey by myself, let me explain: Due to numerous illnesses in the family (some of them mine, some the kids, some his) over the past year, along with my heavy travel schedule and his smaller number of paid days off than what I get per year, Ken has burned through all his time off for 2008 except for a measly half day. Why, a half day, that's perfectly enough time for him to take off work tomorrow morning and come with me, right? Well, I wish. But, you see, I have a day trip to make for work on Thursday, and it's for a meeting I absolutely cannot miss because (a) I'm running it and (b) it involves the executive directors of my organization and the one we're visiting, along with my boss, her boss (our Publisher), and directors of other divisions of both organizations. Crapola, I cannot miss this meeting. And so, I asked Ken to save his half day off just in case one of the boys is sick and needs someone to stay home with him. For the remaining half day that Ken doesn't have left to use for such an occasion, he'd have to throw himself on the mercy of his boss and either take it unpaid or get an advance on next year's vacation (and you can see where the latter option would lead toward the end of 2009).

So we just need to squeak through tomorrow, get me through this stupid test, and move on with our lives. Except that brings me to layer five. What if there is something wrong with my kidneys? I have no symptoms of any such problem--my doctor is merely on a fact-finding mission at this point--but the what ifs keep playing through my head. So the only thing I am truly dreading more than tomorrow's test is the phone ringing the day after when my doctor calls with the results.