MRI tomorrow

Tomorrow, I have my annual MRI check-up. I think that it's been bothering me more than I've let on even to myself, that I've just been burying myself in work and running around having fun when I'm not doing that...at least, this is what the entire bowl of popcorn, two pieces of string cheese, two slices of banana bread topped with cream cheese, glass of pink lemonade and then glass of milk all consumed within the space of two late-night episodes of Gilmore Girls tell me...ouch. It was more than the food, though: just going downstairs to the couch where my brother sprawled every night after work during the summer was nice - I think he spent so much time on it he left a little lil' bro' aura there. And as we all know (or will learn now), he is a v.chill guy, so this was a welcoming and welcomed sense.

But yeah, it bothers me. My MRI at the end of the summer I had the surgery didn't bother me: I figured if my surgeon didn't get it all, I would just go get the radiation. I would just do what I had to do. And I was fine. My first annual MRI in May '05 didn't bother me: I'd only had one seizure during the whole year at that point, so it was probably just a fluke, nothing to worry about. But by that summer, the seizures started rolling in hardcore, and they have been ever since. One neurologist ordered a scan last October because meds weren't controlling the attacks: this MRI made me worry a little. Clean. Thank God. Now the seizures are worse than they even were back in October (but since the Keppra, thank God a little better than they were just a couple of months ago). So I'm worried.

But what's worse: now, after two years, I feel like I've finally gotten myself back on track. That whole year unnamed seizures, I was a mess. My entire senior year I spent "making up" for the junior year I had wasted (regardless of people telling me I had nothing to make up, my [if cliche] motto was "work hard; play hard"). And my post-grad gap year, a mess, until the spring, when I finally moved out to London with Rasheed. Then, THEN things started to come together as I had been working to line them up for the last two years. London. The Fulbright. The Jack Kent Cooke. I set myself up for the fall, Sussex, for the PhD in the States to follow. I couldn't be in a better position. Except this little nagging health problem. It terrifies me. What if, after I've finally gotten everything back together again, what if -

It's hard to finish that sentence.

I know I'll be fine. I know that there's nothing I can do about it, so worry is wasteful. ...That almost makes it harder though, knowing that it's out of my control. But, that still doesn't stop a little part of me from wondering frantically: "Did I live my life as best I could this past year? Did I eat healthy enough? [Tonight being no example. NOR Burger King Thursdays in Wimbledon...ouch.] Exercise? Did I put myself under too much stress those months at Pages, or should I have taken a break/found a new job? [My dad believes that repressed stress/anger causes cancer, ironically, giving me one more thing about which to be paranoid/stressed.]"

I have to be fine, because what else could I be?

Tomorrow I go in at 12:45. Rasheed is coming. They'll probably have me loaded up into the machine by 1. Luckily, the machine itself has absolutely no effect on my mental state, nor the injections they shoot me up with halfway through the process. In fact, I've had so many of these damn things (seven, plus one CT scan in just over two years), I've been known to fall asleep in them! True story! Something about all of that banging around my head must soothe my twisted soul.

But I will be okay. Like my friend Kari wisely says: "Just think of it as going in and getting solid evidence that you're fine and all set to leave. You're already fine; now you'll just know for sure."

True 'dat.