In which the blogger feels like he should now appreciate life more, but he wonders, "Whose life...?"

My blood is clean. Urine, too. Sugar is a little high, but that’s what I get for drinking pop with breakfast. Chest X-Rays (front, back, side, side) show that contrary to recent popular belief, yes, I DO have a heart. Lungs, too, a liver, and a bunch of other lumpy organs. The EKG even shows that my heart beats, albeit with an irregular pacing. I like to think of it as syncopated, like a Gloria Estefan song. CAT scan shows that though I feel like lately I’ve not been using it, the brain’s still present and accounted for. I asked if they could us that big machine to zap out the parts that make me crazy/bad boyfriend/ADD/anxious. They said no, so I just laid there and got scanned.

Diagnosis? Left arm paresthesias, accompanied by vertigo. Translation: tingly, numb arm with an unknown cause. It might be a pinched nerve stemming from a wild Friday night out (three words: Hula Hoop Contest). Could be a product of my (evidently) high blood pressure, which is (obviously) a product of my high stress level, which is (undoubtedly) a product of my anxiety, which is (primarily) aggravated by my life. It might be degenerative nerve disorder. There’s a chance it’s the same nerve inflammation my mom experiences. My arm could be slowly mutating into a super-extremity, so I’ll soon live my dream of fighting crime with a quirky sense of good and evil.

And it could be a “small aneurism or stroke”.

I was sitting at my desk Saturday, when my vision clouded twice in rapid succession, and someone grabbed the top of my head, jerking it quickly forward, to the right, back, and then tossed it forward. Well, that’s what it felt like. My hot ER doctor told me it was vertigo, and it was pretty common. Not common for me, I thought.

I passed all the cute neuro-tests he put me through.

Hot ER Doctor: Grip my fingers.
Me: But I just met you. *grip*
HERD: Lift your right leg, then your left.
Me: Should we be doing this in the hall?
HERD: Move your tongue both ways
Me: Only if you do the same. There’s not much room to maneuver in there.

Since CAT scans are rarely enough to make a diagnosis, I’m going back for an MRI so the crazy weird Asian CAT scan guy can look for “bleeding, clots, or signs of trauma”. I asked if he meant emotional trauma and its tendency to become lodged in the folds of my ever-expanding consciousness. He said no.

I’m freaked, but I’m dealing. I’m alive, and the same things that piss me off on any other day are still pissing me off today. That’s why I’ve been instructed to find ways to stop letting things piss me off.

And I said they needed to find ways to remove those parts of my brain I mentioned.