It’s Sunday night and I’m feeling a little anxious about tomorrow’s bronchoscopy/lavage procedure. I'm contemplating what it will entail: they'll put the equivalent of a drain-snake down my throat and into my lungs and then (because that's not horrifying enough a prospect) they'll wash my lungs out with salt water. And they plan to do all this while I’m awake. For real. Doesn’t it sound alien abduction-esque? Or like something that might happen at Guantanamo? At least I’ll be sedated, which is the next best thing to being out cold. I’m hoping to be heavily sedated. Like sky-high and super mellow, simultaneously. Goofy smile, drool, whatever. Just as long as I don’t feel like I’m choking on tubes and drowning at sea. Maybe my imagination is worse than the reality will be. Perhaps it won't be so traumatizing, this tubes-down-the-throat procedure and this so-called "lavage." (They can't fool me; just becasue they say it in French it doesn't make it ok.) Anyway, unpleasant as it may be, I know it must be done – we need to know what’s going on in my lungs, and sooner rather than later. I just hope that whatever it is that we find, it’s more pleasant to treat than it is to diagnose.