I felt silly going to the doctor. While I was in the ultrasound room, though, with the lady checking all along the big vein or artery or who knows what from my groin to my ankle and frowning and highlighting things and thumping my calf and listening to my pulse, my heart raced and I had to consciously breathe. So even though it will be a needless expense, maybe it wasn't a needless expense. 

In the end, this doctor trip was more for my anxiety disorder than my leg, though. No blood clot. Just #catastrophize.

I have, however, run 11 miles since the doctor, so there's that.

In mid-April, I ran a half-marathon. A few weeks later, I developed a stress fracture. Since then, I've been building back up from that. I had a boot for two weeks, then I got out of the boot and was only able to run a mile and that mile gave me pain, so I cut back to an even more conservative plan that had me building up from three cycles of 9 minutes walk/1 minute run to today's final six cycles of 5 minutes walk/5 minutes run. After a rest day tomorrow, I should be able to run three miles for the first time in more than a month on Friday. I want to get going again. I've signed up for another half-marathon in November. I'm tired of babying my feet.

Except now my calf hurts. And my friend and co-worker Diane just got diagnosed with a blood clot. And all I can think about is that this a blood clot, even though when I used my foam roller, my calf was ridiculously tight, and there's every reason to believe I've been overcompensating on that leg whether I realize it or not. And when I found a lump in my breast it hurt so bad the day before the mammogram and not at all the day I was cleared as "normal." And the lump in my leg throbbed until it came out and I discovered it was a harmless lipoma and no other lump in my leg (and there are many) hurts because I assume now they are all lipomas.

So I'm going to my doctor tomorrow morning to have what is in all liklihood a muscle sore from being really worked again after a month or so of lighter workouts checked out to make sure I'm not going to drop over dead. Because that is where my anxiety goes -- straight to dead. Rational? No. Logical? No. But if I let myself think about a blood clot for more than five minutes, my chest goes tight and I feel like I can't breathe, and then I wonder if it's a panic attack or a pulminary embolism from my blood clot that I probably don't have. And even if I do have one, Diane has one and is most certainly not dead, and I won't be dead, either, because I will take the medicine and everything will be fine.

So far, the tightness in my chest has not been a pulmonary embolism. It is totally anxiety, which can be a tremendous bitch.

But I'm going to the doctor, more for my anxiety disorder than for my calf. This is what I do now, at forty. I do not try to convince the anxiety disorder that things are no big deal. I just go get facts, and most of the time, things really are no big deal. But I no longer wait around to see if the cat throwing up means anything special or if the lump in my breast is a cyst or breast cancer. I just go and let a professional person tell me what is the what.

Then, on Friday, assuming there is no blood clot, I'm going to RUN.