A Bump in My Synapse

I have never had any real medical procedures.  The last one I had was in high school when I got my wisdom teeth pulled out.  And that's not anything severe, although they do put you under and rip four teeth out of your head.  It could be a little intense.  I remember waking up confused, in a small cubbyhole bed in the dentist's office, with a guy telling me that he knew my brother.  He proceeded to have a conversation with me, but I couldn't talk.  I was so drugged up, I could barely make out what he looked like.  I don't even remember getting home.


This last memory of my big medical procedure came to me as I was leaving the doctor today.  I didn't freak out then and think that I was never going to wake up, so why was I so worried the other day?


A few days ago I called my extremely well trusted dermatologist, to have him look at a bump on my left shoulder.  I don't want to get into any details, because I for one hate creating an image of a medical abnormality.  I can barely watch Gray's Anatomy, and I definitely can't watch the surgery channel.  As I lied in bed the other night my mind began to wander, and the mild hypochondriac in me went crazy.  My first thought was it could be cancerous, or pre-cancer, since according to my symptoms, my doctor deduced that it was most likely infected.  An infected growth on my shoulder.  What if the cancer spread down my arm?  By now I was sure it was cancer.  I started to think of all the people that I know that have gotten cancer.  Girls my age; I was sad.  Sad for them, and how they endured so much pain.  The pain in their bodies, and the emotional pain they and their families experienced.  I was almost in tears as my mind continued to fire a chain of completely unrealistic thoughts.  It's going to spread down my arm, and the next thing I know, its not going to be just an infected lump, but my whole arm will get infected.  And you know what happens at that point.  They cut it off.  So now I have no arm.  How am I going to do anything with only one arm?   


That's when I started to laugh.  I went from crying to laughing in less than a minute.  Cut off my arm.  What year is this?  They don't bring out the hacksaw and just start cutting off limbs these days.  I actually imagined myself with just a stump for an arm.  I put my head on the Soul Surfer's body.  The fact that the mind can go from a normal thought to something totally ridiculous, made me laugh.  No arm!  Just don't even think about it and go to sleep.  


Today was the big procedure.  I won't go into any bloody details, but everything turned out fine.  My doctor said I was one of the calmest patients.  I walked away with a tender gauze patched shoulder.  And my arm still attached.


Note: Not everything is worth worrying about.  Don't let your thoughts overtake reality.