Okay, this is going to be personal and introspective and not very much about knitting at all. If you'd rather see some pretty pictures, go here or read one of the other fine blogs I have linked on my sidebar.

But I think I need to get this out; it might help me.

I am, by nature, a worrier. I can't not worry about things, no matter how hard I try. It's like that old bit where they tell you not to think about an elephant - and what can you not get out of your mind, then? Elephants. No matter how hard you try.

I think it has something to do with my personal brain circuitry. I'm also prone to "earworms", to the point where I have to be careful not to listen to certain songs right before bed or I won't sleep well for running it over and over in my head. I'm also prone to being a somewhat anxious person. I'm one of those people with a blood pressure of 110/50 when a friend takes it for me just for the hell of it, and 170/80 in the doctor's office when I'm about to get a shot, or get probed, or get lectured about my weight. So I'm prone to apprehension and blowing things up into a bigger deal than they actually are.

Well, my folks called me the other night. And in the way of talking about what was going on, my father commented that they had their annual blood test results back, and there was something not normal on his. Oh, he reassured me, it's not my kidneys or my liver or my heart. It's a marker that can indicate several serious things. He didn't say which things, because I'm sure he thought that would make me worry. He also didn't tell me what the blood protein marker was, I think because he knew I'd run right to the Internet and look it up and worry. He did say that it was a marker that sometimes showed up in cases of muscular dystrophy...which I think was his way of discounting the results (but I could also probably use that piece of information to "backdoor" find what the marker was, and then what the potential diseases are. No. I am not going to. That way lies madness.).

He said "oh, it was one of those quickie lab tests, so I think they made a mistake." But he did go in for another blood test and for further workups. He has no symptoms of anything weird, but it creeps me out to think they could catch some kind of degenerative disease (I'm guessing the "possibilities" are some kinds of degenerative muscular or neurological diseases) before symptoms, and then stick him with the diagnosis and the expectation of "this is going to happen to me"

I've been brooding about this since I heard. Part of me says "he had the same tests last year and everything was normal, it HAS to be a lab screw-up or a false positive" but part of me seizes up with worry. I'm not ready to lose my daddy yet. I'm not. I'm so not. I'm not ready to see the man that I thought of as the toughest and strongest and smartest and best man in the world when I was a little child laid low by some stupid protein malfunction. I'm not ready to deal with it.

But then I swing back to thinking how it has to be a false positive. Or a lab mess-up. Or maybe it's something totally treatable. But then I start thinking about ALS, or Parkinson's, or other sorts of diseases. I don't want him to go through that. I don't want to go through that with him. I don't want my mom to go through that with him, even more than I don't want myself to go through that with him. I don't want to spend a semester or more on tenterhooks, knowing I might have to run back there on short notice, knowing I might have to say goodbye.

Damn it, I am so not ready for this. I was contemplating what to do for their 50th wedding anniversary in five years. I want my dad to see me make full professor.

I know, chances are good I'm worrying about this for nothing, but you can't unhear something like "they found an abnormal result in my blood test."

And then again, I think: he's nearly 70, some of these things progress slowly. He might have as many good years left as he would have had otherwise. And that does not comfort me at all.

So I spent most of Sunday afternoon at loose ends (despite my cheerful update on what I was knitting). I wound up running out just before dusk to prep the field lab for this week because I couldn't take sitting on the sofa for one more minute. I've been jumpy and unfocused this morning. I keep returning to the thought like the way a person probes a chipped or broken tooth with their tongue.

The thing that gets me is this week is Genetic Disorders Week in general biology, so I'm already focused on Things That Can Go Terribly Wrong in people's body-systems.

I'm trying to keep busy - being busy is the only thing that keeps me from seeing the paralyzing fear that lurks off to one side of me like a nightmare monster, that will jump out and grab me and devour me if I let my guard down for just one minute.

I am not ready to deal with this.