THIS WEEK

This, dear reader, is a strange week, medically speaking that is. The wife, with the wee baby progressively growing in her midst, is inexorably moving toward completion, at least of this phase of things, while I seem only further mired in a limbo of perpetual appointments and reappointments. While today the wife crossed a heretofore unknown threshold, having reached her seventh visit to the OBGYN, she need no longer hand over the obligatory co-pay, I continue to look ahead, or so it appears, to an unending exchange of eighteen dollars across the rails of the sliding-glass window in the reception areas of countless doctors in all shapes, varieties, and specializations.

Even as the preadmission paperwork was being filled our and the birth plan was being completed the MRI came back, following the example of all of my previous tests, with no results. I suppose I should be thankful that this particular test found nothing, but the wife and I, in a moderately perverse twist of logic, had actually been hoping for a tumor, as a pituitary tumor would at least explain the odd array of symptoms I am experiencing and is almost universally treatable.

Certainly I do not wish to begrudge the wife the recent smoothness of her transition towards completion of this phase of things; we are pleased as punch and are counting our blessings, to use only a couple of clichés. I must admit, though, that it feels odd to be moving so quickly to fruition on one front of my life while simultaneously performing the role of Josef K in another.

Indeed, this week I shall have an appointment with my psychiatrist with no other aim in mind than to request a piece of paper with the word *SANE* stamped upon it, perhaps in large, red letters, to present to the growing cadre of doctors, hopefully returning their diagnostic powers to the realm of the organic.

[Note: Everyone must say a hearty huzzah for the healthy progress of both the wife and the aquababy!]