Open the Pod Bay Doors, Hal

Ever had a CT ("cat") scan? It's a freaky experience.

They have you lay face-down on this wierd headrest with your arms at your sides, and then they wrap you in a thin blanket of some space-age material like a burrito. You glide forward into a tube filled with a grid of red laser lines, which abruptly vanish just as you're flashing back to every bad sci-fi movie you've ever seen. You glide back and forth for a while while something whirs around inside the tube, and then it's over.

I'm not normally given to claustrophobia, but that thing did it. Not shrieking claustrophobia, mind you, but a definite I'd-rather-be-elsewhere vibe. I wished it had been uncomfortable, frankly--that would have given me something immediate to think about. I doubt anyone of ordinary imagination could get a CT without visualizing, however briefly, the appearance of something utterly unexpected and unwelcome on the scan.

I am, by the way, heartily sick of doctors. The incompetent fool I saw last month has a lot to do with that, yes, but that was two appointments out of several dozen over the last few years, and six in the last two months alone. There will, of course, be at least one more, to review the scans. Hopefully this guy has a clue...