There is one thing about this which completely devastates me, and with which I am unable to cope. So I avoid the topic. I mentally block it out. This is the thought that occurred to me after I noticed the left hemi-peresis, but before I became more persuadded that it is not a tumor. The unbearable thought is that I might somehow leave my children without a father. Even as I type this I am blocking out the thought. Whenever I talk about it, or think about it, I get all choked up and sometimes start sobbing. I can't function. I had been in the doctor's office, on Christmas Eve, talking to my wife on the cell phone, calmly, about what the doctor saw in the first MRI, when I heard my son, on her end, saying "I want to talk to Daddy!" I felt my composure suddenly crack and I managed to choke out to my wife not to let my son talk to me, but then I fell all apart and the doctor had to talk to her. This same dread was what was going through my mind when I freaked out during the second MRI attempt that same day. It was not just claustrophobia. Imagine thinking about leaving your kids as you are being slipped into a coffin-like enclosure.

There is only one other thought which is worse than leaving your children. And those of you with kids know what that is.