I've had a few scans lately. Preventative. Thankfully. Heart calcium scan showed my heart is seven years younger than the rest of me. That's good, I reckon. I mean, it would be better if my heart was 25 or something but, I'll take it. Bone density scan done yesterday. Check. Brain scan a few months ago to make sure the migraines aren't something more sinister. Check. The wonder of modern medicine is they can put you in a tube and look on the inside with minimal invasion. A friend was traveling in the Caribbean not long ago and started having serious abdominal pain. The small island hospital didn't have a scanner machine so they suggested exploratory surgery to see what was wrong. She declined and got a med-evac flight to Miami where they had said scanner machine and determined she needed an appendectomy. She's fine. But the whole thing is scary on a few levels. Appendicitis is no joke and they would have discovered it had they done the proposed surgery. However, it could have been gas - just saying. And instead of having a little scar where she had her appendix removed, she could have had a really big scar where she might have benefited from some Bean-o. Just imagine next bikini season, "Well, this is my scar from the appendectomy... and this is my scar from burrito night." I know... far enough. All's well that... you know the rest.
The most terrifying scan I ever had was an MRI. The ortho thought torn rotator cuff and sent me off to confirm. A CT scan is a big circle thingy that moves up and down over whatever area they need to see. An MRI machine is a small tube they stick you in that makes noise. Did I mention it's small? Did I mention it's loud? Did I mention claustrophobia? Not a good combo. I was terrified. They prescribed an anti-anxiety pill. I guess it helped a little. But I still kept my eyes closed the whole time and cried through it. At one point the nurse said in the earphones that I had to stop crying because my sniffling was messing up the pictures. Easy for her to say. What I remember most about that day was my Hubby. He knows my fears. And that day, they let him stand at the end of that tube and hold my foot. The whole time. He promised that if I panicked he would yank me out. I believed him. And I made it through. Had some physical therapy and rotator cuff was good as new - though probably older than the rest of me by a few years.
Lent is sort of a scan... a 40-day-tube that slides around us to determine if there's something going on inside that needs to be addressed. Non-invasive but revealing. Innocuous. More like a subtle dawning... my heart is not in sync with my age... my shoulder is out of whack from weight-bearing... my head hurts from stress... my bones are brittle with care... my stomach is bloated with excess... And then comes the Plan to address these conditions. A three-day Remedy scheduled. A Light at the end of the Lenten-tunnel. Go in dead. Come out alive. Somebody holding on the whole time. Don't cry. Resurrection is on the way. I believe. Selah.
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