Cuts like a knife.

I week from tomorrow, I will check myself into the hospital, strip down to one of those embarrassingly indecent and unforgivably drafty paper gowns, and be put to sleep while my doctor digs around at my insides, looking for reasons why.

I don't like hospitals. I've only been in them a handful of times in my life.

Three times to visit people with babies. Once to have my own. Another time so that Dr. X could visit his grandmother (but Daughter X and I just watched "Spongebob Squarepants" on YouTube in the lobby). 

Yet another time to be with a friend who ran down a burning staircase in escape after two little boys set his garage apartment on fire. I did a drop-off at the emergency room once, but I don't think that counts. I didn't go inside.

When Daughter X was born, I spent five days in the hospital. Luckily, Dr. X was with me for most of it and that helped me get along. We both felt like we were trapped inside some bizarre, antiseptic Stephen-King style Howard Johnson - complete with crochety nurses and flickering lighting. In spite of a fussy newborn, a bloated midsection and swollen feet, I was glad to leave that place.

Hospitals are both happy and sad places. They are birth and death. Good news and bad. I'm just lucky, I guess, I'd never really had to spend that much time in one. Nor has my family. I've never broken a leg. What I feared was my appendix bursting was really just an overactive muscle spasm triggered by a late winter cold. Every other malady that has affected the X household has been manageable with a heating pad, an overdose of Vitamin C and the neti pot.

I trust my doctor. I do. I know all will go well and hopefully lead me to a healthier life.

But that doesn't mean it's going to feel so right. Not one bit.