It being the end of the year and my deductible having been met, I have been busy seeing all of my -ologists.

Today was the gynecologist.

Inexplicably, the magazines in the outer waiting room at my doctor’s office were limited to Cycling World and WebMD.

I’m not overly interested in the finer points of Cycling, and I am not a person who needs to be reading about what could go wrong with the human body while sitting in a doctor’s waiting room.

In the back of one, there was a little mini-interview with Kathy Bates (someone once told me I’m almost a perfect mix of Kathy Bates and Janeane Garofalo – I should have known right then) about her bout with ovarian cancer.

In another, there were nine signs of cancer you should not ignore. I had seven of them.

You can imagine the panic rising in my throat.

Finally, it’s my turn and the nurse calls me back. She leads me to a room to get some information from me, but I tell her that if I’m going to have to go in a cup, now’s the time, because I’ve been holding it for an hour.

The sample giving is always fraught with peril, because you’re supposed to put the (unlidded) cup in a tiny little sally port door, which has a spring on it, and I used to wouldn’t have thought anything about that, but a friend of mine who shall remain nameless (but her first initial is V) put her little cup in there and the door sprang shut and popped her hand and threw the contents of the cup all over her and the little room, so now I always think, “What if something goes wrong?”

Anyway. I got the little sample in the door and didn’t spill it all over me and went back in the room and the nurse asked if I had any concerns and I told her that yes, I had some symptoms of ovarian cancer.

She asked how long I’d been concerned about this, and I said, “Approximately 25 minutes, but I’m really, really worried about it.”

And sure enough, when she took my blood pressure, it was higher than it normally is, and she told my nurse practitioner, and I had blood drawn to see if I have tumors, along with the normal tests, and sent me on my way.

For those who are aware of my problem with removing bandaids from my own inner arms, I did not get a bandaid today, because I was not aware at the time that I was going to be having dinner with Lynn (who is my bandaid remover) and family.

I believe today concluded all of my testing, which is fortunate, because I’m not sure I have the intestinal fortitude for any more medical magazines.