I can has MRI? Or not.

Those of you who have been following the fortunes of Liz, aka Lymphopo of As the Tumor Turns, will know that the aggressive Stage IV lymphoma actually went away and that she is now back in the gym rebuilding the cut physique of yore.

But her most recent post -- she's come back to the blog after what was for her a long hiatus -- was about going back to the New Orleans charity hospital she calls Our Lady of the Damned (which I assume is the same place Clayton Cubitt at Operation Eden has a photo of here; surely there can't be more than one) to ask about her residual chemo-brain and see whether there might not be some more sinister cause for her lapses of concentration and memory. She was seen by an oncologist. NOW READ ON:

'After reviewing my chart and asking me some basic questions, she said, "You know, it's not really unusual for our memories to give us a little trouble, what with aging and menopause and all. What sorts of problems have you been having?"

"Well," I said. "Last week I locked my keys in my car."

"Ha!" she said. "That's nothing. Last week I locked my keys, my phone, and my emergency beeper in my trunk. And the whole 45 minutes while I was waiting for the Pop-A-Lock truck, I had to listen to the phone ringing and the emergency beeper frantically beeping, like all my patients were dying."

"Well," I said. "I missed my turnoff on the interstate. I was halfway to Shreveport before I even realized it."

"Ha!" she said. "That's nothing. One Tuesday I went to my Wednesday hospital by mistake, and I was on my third patient before I realized it."

"Ok," I said. "I accidentally sent a fuck-you email intended for my ex to my landlord in California instead."

"Whoa," she said. "Wow. Ok. I'm ordering you an MRI of the brain, stat."'


Pffft. I'm still recovering from a mistake I made some years ago, when I wrote a long, anguished email to the co-ordinator of a graduate program explaining in detail exactly why the student whose thesis I was supposed to be supervising would never, ever be able to even start a thesis, much less finish one, and then (you know what's coming, don't you) confidently sent it straight off to the student in question.

Not only do I not need an MRI (I had a CT scan of my brain a few years ago when tracking down monster headaches and I'm happy to report that my brain is beautiful),

I don't even need anyone to remind me that Freud would say there's no such thing as an accident. And given her many Flickr photos of and comic wailings about the lack of space and leaky roof at the rented home she calls 'Le Shaque', I'm guessing that Liz doesn't need an MRI either, so much as a gentle reminder of what Papa Sigmund might have said.