Approximately free

What's the loneliest place in the world? That moment when you arrive in the operating theatre and you've been handed over to the crew who will be operating is quite high up there, and you're all alone, is quite high up there in the loneliness stakes. You just lie there completely alone wondering if this could be your last conscious act, wishing they would hurry up and get on with it and knock you out. It's a relief when the anaesthetist comes to chat and tell you what he's going to do and how happy we're all going to be. OK for you I say to myself. And then he sends me to sleep and nothing.

They don't seem to use a mask anymore or to count down until you dose off . Oblivion is achieved intravenously nowadays or at least it was last time.

Having an MRI or CT scan can be quite lonely too, as you lie there listening to the machine clunking away in such an old fashioned way, and you wonder what it's seeing as it slices through you. What more bad news is it about to disclose? Maybe this time it will be good news and the bloody thing realises it was all a mistake and it got it wrong. Wouldn't that be nice.

The Scottish poet, Edwin Morgan wrote a poem about having scans, called Scan Day. He's one of my favourite Scottish poets, well worth a look if you don't know him. I've maybe quoted his poem Strawberries before, and if not I should have done. So go find it for yourself. Meantime Scan Day:

Two scans in one day, CT and bone- they are certainly looking after me.
Computerised tomography like a non-invasive Vesalius will slice me apart to see
If I am really what I ought to be and not what I don't want to be.
In the giant redwood forest you are shown the rings of a fallen tree
With the blips and wavy bits that tell you it's been a good fight, even with destiny.
                                 There are no chimeras
                                 Under the cameras.
You are laid out as you are, imperfect, waiting, wondering, approximately free.