I'm probably dying ...

... of hand.

I have to go get an MRI of a lump in my hand. I don't really think it's a big deal, but you know better safe than something or other.

I've always tried not to worry until worrying does some good. Often I try not to worry even after it's demonstrably a good time to freak the hell out. However, I'm worried now, not so much about the fact that I'm almost certainly about to die of the nations 1Mth most dangerous killer - hand gophers! - but because I'm scheduled for an MRI ... with contrast.

I've never had an MRI of any sort, - with contrast, with bananas, or with a happy ending. However, I was with a woman who was toughing it out while passing a kidney stone once.

Wait, I'm tying it back to the story.

She's a certifiable bad-ass. I expect Chuck Norris couldn't pass a kidney stone without at least tearing up, but this ole girl sure did. I've never developed so much respect for a person in one nighttime.

And stay up all night with her I did, trying to help her navigate the medical system - (which blows in this country btw, and I'm not just saying that; seriously, travel to other countries before you decide the USA is still the best at anything). The only thing that almost caused our heroine to give up and just walk out of the hospital, while still suffering from an undiagnosed pain that most people who've been through both describe as worse than childbirth, was when the doctor threatened a second MRI with contrast.

I had to physically restrain the steely old bird and I think I only managed that because she was already in dire scalding pain.

I'm horrified. It's like going into the hospital with a broadsword up your urethra, but being like, you know, resigned to it, then deciding that this one test is just too much to bear.

I'm not even worried about MRIs in general. Some people get tetchy about them because you have/get to get inside a huge metal tube. I, of course, will be pretending I'm being fitted for a robo-exoskeleton, so no worries there. I'm also not really claustrophobic.

Some people whine because they're loud. So are robot battle suits you pansies.

No, I'm whining because apparently adding the words "with contrast" means they inject hot magma into your arm or something and somehow that's less comfortable than passing a shard of uric acid through the most minute and tender plumbing of your amazingly gentle bits.

In the immortal words of a that cell-phone abusing whalebird, Twitter, "FML".