Frumpy Middle-Aged Mom: I can't have a brain tumor. I've got dinner on the stove

(MCT) — As Dave Barry likes to say, I am not making this up.

I went to have a brain scan Friday, because I've been having bad headaches lately. My doctor felt that I probably had a sinus infection. I agreed.

I don't know if you've ever had an MRI, but if you've ever watched a piece of luggage go into the airport scanning machine, well, that's pretty much what it feels like.

After I had the brain scan, they told me I wouldn't blow up the airplane.

Seriously, they sent me into this room where I waited for the results. However, my doctor was off Friday, so instead of anyone talking to me about what was going on, a technician came over, plunked me in a wheelchair and wheeled me directly over to the hospital emergency room next door.

Even though I am a trained interrogator, all I could get out of my ride was, "You have to talk to the E.R.

I had absolutely no idea what was going on. They stuck me in an attractive cubicle in the emergency room and took my vital signs. They told me to get into a hospital gown and get into bed, but I refused.

I wouldn't even sit on the bed, because I didn't want to pay for it.

"What the heck am I doing here?" I demanded to anyone who came near me.

People just told me I "had to talk to the doctor," who was possibly out having a smoke break, because he certainly wasn't anywhere near me for a long time.

Finally, after an hour or two of waiting, I phoned the doctor who was subbing for my doctor to tell her I didn't know why I was there, so I was leaving now and going home. I had to pick my kids up from school.

She told me I couldn't go home because they'd found a mass in the back of my head and I had to wait for the neurosurgeon to come and see me and possibly perform emergency surgery that night.

Finally, the E.R. doctor deigned to drop by to essentially tell me the same thing. And on my questioning, told me that the tumor looked malignant so I should plan on being in the hospital five or six days.

"I can't have a brain tumor," I explained very carefully. "I have spaghetti on the stove."

This is what happens when someone tells you something impossible. It was like being told I had been abducted by aliens and was even now in an alien spaceship cleverly designed to look like a hospital. That seemed about as plausible to me as having a brain tumor.