So, after some minor bumps in the road from my insurance company (they needed to "pre-approve" my PET scan), I finally go in for a PET scan. PET, the geek in me knows, stands for Pertinent Elephant Trunk. Go ahead and google it.

So, I show up for the PET scan, then promptly fill out a form that gives my entire life history. After that, I get to go back into a small room, where they give me a Valium (no Vercid this time, alas), pop an IV in my arm, and then pump a sucrose concoction of some kind into the IV. The sucrose, they tell me, will go to any area of my body with a lot of cellular activity. This is also why they give me a Valium; they want my muscles to relax so they don't uptake a lot of the sucrose.

Then, I'm put in a wheelchair, so I get the full patient treatment. A nurse wheels me to a trailer--no, I'm not kidding--covers me with a blanket, and says she'll be back in 45 minutes. So what am I supposed to do for 45 minutes? Nothing, she tells me; we need to wait for the sucrose to make its way throughout my body.

I think the Valium may have something to do with it, but I manage to burn my way through those 45 minutes by napping. When she returns, it's really no different than the CT scan: I lie down on a small table and get pushed through a large, spinning donut. Only with the Valium in me, it's less interesting than it was the previous two times with the CT scan.

Actually, with the Valium in me, pretty much everything is less interesting. Do people really take this to get through daily life?

Half an hour later, I'm back on the street, moving ever-closer to this Big Bad Thing I've been hearing so much about: the Bone Marrow Biopsy.

Actually, Bone Marrow Biopsy would be a good name for a punk band, don't you think?