<\/p>\n
My daughter,<\/strong><\/span> Lucy, calls. She\u2019s six months pregnant. This is January 2022. She says, \u201cI don\u2019t want to dump on you.\u201d Then she does. She says the most recent ultrasound shows a spot on the baby\u2019s heart. Lucy is on vacation in Mexico, and the midwife knew Lucy was on vacation, but the midwife nevertheless emailed Lucy, informing her to come in for her next ultrasound in six weeks instead of eight. That email dampened Lucy’s vacation mood. My mood (non-vacation) dampened, too. Lucy is in her late 30s. The docs are monitoring the heck out of her.<\/p>\n Me . . .\u00a0 I had insane back pain in 2017 and got an MRI. The result: a herniated disc at L1-L2. OK, but then the doctor called me a day later and said I might have syringomyelia. What? That\u2019s a cyst on your spinal cord that can mess with your nerves and brain. I scheduled a second MRI right away.<\/p>\n My insurance company called the morning of the second MRI and said the procedure would be $3900, and they weren’t sure they’d pay for it because I had just had an MRI. I said \u201cfull speed ahead.” If my brain was frying, I wanted to know now.<\/p>\n The second<\/strong><\/span> MRI came back \u201cartifactual\u201d — no sign of a brain problem. False positive. That’s my story, and I told Lucy. So many tests.<\/p>\n But I guess more tests are better than no tests.<\/p>\n