My imagination is robust. This comes in handy for having fun or planning an event. But it can also get me in trouble. When John would be late, back before cell phones, I concocted elaborate scenarios in which I was a widow with young children. 

 

Last week, I was cleaning up from a sewing class at the elementary school. It was time to hoist six sewing machines which are called Featherweights across the school and into my car, but when you come right down to it they are not well named. I also had bags of fabric, scissors, rulers and pins which all needed to get back home. 

 

As I began to unpack them from the trunk to my sewing room, I noticed a funny feeling in my chest. I figured I was almost done and could catch my breath later, but when I reached down to feel the spot, there was a plum sized lump where none should be. Fortunately, my fantasies are not so rampant that I assumed I had stage four breast cancer, but something was wrong. Had I pressed the scissors too close? Was an artery cut by the tools I use on fabric? I called the doctor, hoping she would tell me I had more than a few minutes to live. My explanation was too vague for a definitive answer, and she invited me to come in. But the twenty minute trip seemed lengthy. The three inch distance between the growing pool of blood and my heart would leave me unconscious before I got there. 

 

John might have taken me to Urgent Care if I weren't playing out my fears at full volume. We went to the ER. 

 

In the inevitable wait, I pictured the doctors hovering over me on a gurney, ready to cut open my chest and start sewing. 

 

"I have scissors, needles, and thread in the trunk, if you need them," I mumbled in my imagination, as the anesthesia began to take effect. 

 

No one there seemed to think I was dying, which was oddly reassuring. In fact, the Physician's Assistant- my injury did not rank a full fledged doctor - looked briefly and did not even feel it. 

 

"Ice it and take Tylenol for the pain."

 

"I won't die?" I asked. 

 

"Not today." He left for more serious patients. 

 

I was chagrined at my own mistake, but then justified my waste of resources by counting the times I have taken up space in an ER. Five times, in forty four years, unless you add the hospital birth for twins which makes it six. 

 

I now know what a hematoma is, should it come up on Jeopardy.