You can run, but you cannot hide.

Let me rephrase that. I can’t run … nor can I hide.

Every year, like a particularly annoying alarm clock, they come around. Annual visits to the oncologist and cardiologist. And my birthday, the rosy bloom of which is greatly diminished as it falls right in the middle of the medical runaround. Such fun!

Needles. Laboratories. Tests. Waiting to get the doctor’s read on life and death. What’s the prognosis, doc? Am I gonna make it for another year?

My mother hated these sessions. She would watch the doctor’s eyes, trying to read in them what he was not saying. When he said “You’re okay,” did he mean it? Was he hiding the truth?

I’m less paranoid than my mother — from whom they actually did hide the truth. It was a different time and it was still legal for doctors to lie “in your best interests.” I’m more worried about what they may be missing than anything they could be hiding. I’ve been misdiagnosed or not diagnosed often. It’s hard for me to feel secure that they’ve gotten it right.

Tests test what they test. Which isn’t necessarily what’s wrong with me (or you). We can pass every test with flags flying, yet still have something most unfortunate going on. Somewhere. In an organ they didn’t test. Or signaled by a wee little symptom they labeled “insignificant.”

So. This morning it starts. Take some blood. Good luck with that. I frequently don’t have a live vein in my body. I always hold my breath until I see the blood actually flowing into the tube.

“You’ve hit a gusher!” I gush. Sometimes, nothing happens. Then, it’s a duster, a dry hole. Some days, there’s no vein into which anyone can get a needle … or get blood out of. Let’s hope this is not one of them.

Inevitable. I can’t wriggle out of the testing cycle. I would if I could. So, for the next few days, it’s me, a lab, an office, and one more test. Until finally, it’s over for another year. Hopefully.

I shall see you all on the other side. Or, as we say here in America, next week.