I'm beginning to feel like a specimen in a petri dish. I've been injected, dyed, x-rayed, probed, scanned, and medically fondled. I might've enjoyed the fondling if the lights were dimmer, but I'm being manhandled under sharp fluorescents. Cringing on a butcher papered examination table while a procession of nurses fold me like kneaded dough with all the emotional investment of assembly line work. And everyone wants blood. Tubes of it. Unfortunately I'm now intimately familiar with the term "hard stick." The worst kind of medical ponography. My veins are skittish creatures, shy of probing needles.

As the test pile up, complications follow. My blood sugar is 500. My blood pressure moves in climbing triple digits. My thyroid is confused. After each test I'm handed a new medication. With each meal I add another pill. The rogue kidney has my body off its axis. I'm a train wreck, off the rails with momentum.  What's frustrates me, is that I feel fine. No aches, pains, no discomfort.

My body is a liar. Physiologically I'M suddenly every relationship I've ever had. "Is something wrong? You have to tell me; I'm not a mind reader." The only new sensations are the emotional Olympics I experience with every doctor visit. Wrung out tension transitioning into that melting icicle of fear that trickles down my spine every time a nurse wanders close with a tray vials and syringes. I would change the channel of my own personal Discovery Channel Special but someone's take out the batteries out of the remote again. I know it work, but mentally I keep pressing buttons over and over.   

My sister made the mistake of ignoring her inner procrastinator and bought an early Halloween costume for her two-year-old son. My nephew is fixated with Elmo but the only Elmo costume was a size too small. Since two year olds and obsessions are rarely parted, my sister squeezes him into costume like she's overstuffing a fuzzy red trash bag. She hoped the costume would be uncomfortable enough that he would shed within minutes and then she could hide until Halloween. But now the costume is the only thing he wants to wear, stiff legging around the house like a stuffed animal zombie; the costume too tight for him to truly bend his knees.

The costume is plastic and polyester and he sweats it through, leaving wet circles when he sits. My sister is afraid to wash it so she soaks it in the sink where it floats like a dead animal. Feeling the material, I know the costume has to be highly flammable. I should be afraid that my nephew might flash flare like a dried Christmas tree if he brushes past a light bulb but since he's sweating so heavily; but I'm  not troubled by his potential for spontaneous combustion. What disturbs me is that the costume looks as if Elmo is consuming my nephew like cane toad with a mouse. My nephew laughing along with Elmo as Elmo slowly swallows him whole.

I tell my parents about the mass on my kidney. At first my father is quiet. Then he's angry with me. Then he's angry at everything. Then he grabs his car keys and leaves.  Minutes later I'm watching headlights circle the driveway.  My mother is nurse. Her voice is very calm. I suddenly feel like I'm being handled and I resent it.

I resent it until later in the evening. I'm watching my mother on the couch. Her face tenses and then collapses in fear and then she fights to compose herself again. I watch her for a very long time. My jaw aches. I realize that I've wanted to control my family's reactions. I don't know why. I don't even know how I wanted them to react. I think I just wanted to control something.  I move and sit on the couch beside my mother.  She is calm and grips my hand and we sit and wait for my father.  

These are the things I think about when I'm trying not to think.  I think breakfast is the reason I never became a cowboy.  Cowboys don't eat cereal.  Cowboys eat hoop snake with fried cactus, thin sliced coyote on sesame buns and strains of chili from tin cups. The Pecos Bill diet.

I think I would like eating from a tin cup, but I don't think I could sit around a campfire and not want a S'more.  Hopefully a Southwestern s'mores topped with a chocolate covered jalapeno.  I don't think cowboys make s'mores due to the universal fact that it's impossible to look hardened and grizzled and cowboy-like when roasting marshmallows because roasting marshmallows is overwhelming fun. It's the perfect combination of pyromania and sugar fluff, especially when the marshmallow flares up and goes all melty.

Some things I already know. The doctor might waltz with the words like undifferentiated mass, but I know what I have. From looking at the scans of my kidney I can feel the cancer. It's like watching a tiger pace in a cage. It's power and death moving in a circle. I know that if the cancer has spread past my kidney and if it's terminal, I won't waste the time I have left half-living in a hospital. If it's terminal I know the end will be quick and painful and prolonging it isn't my kind of stupidity.

I didn't know if I wanted to tell my family, not at first. Somehow my mother would know something. When it comes to her children she's a shark with blood in the water. Keeping silent I risk waking in the hospital and finding my mother with a full head of worry and protecting waiting for me to clear anesthesia. Selfish or not I don't want to tell my family because I'm not sure I have the strength to take their reactions. I can handle my own helplessness, but I find it much harder to bear the helplessness of others.