The Scan Came Back Clear

They told you it was clear and you said thank you and you meant it, and you got as far as the car park before the sensation came back.

That is what nobody prepares you for. The result was about the pictures. The sensation is in your side, where it has been since February, and a letter does not reach it.

So you started reading again.

You have read what a clear scan does and does not rule out, which is a real question and has real answers, and you have found the ones that say rarely and the ones that say in a small number of cases, and you have read those particular phrases many times.

You have found a condition that is not commonly detected on the kind of scan you had. You have read about it at length. You have found people describing something that sounds like your side.

And you know, in the daylight part of your mind, what this looks like from outside. You know that a person who has been examined and cleared and who is still reading at eleven at night is describing something other than a diagnostic problem.

But the sensation is real. You are not making it up and nobody has suggested you are, and that is exactly why the reading will not stop: because something in your body is genuinely doing something, and one letter has not accounted for it.

What this page will not do

I am not going to tell you what your symptom is. I have not examined you, I am not qualified, and a page that offers a person a diagnosis is doing real harm however confidently it does it.

I am not going to tell you it is nothing, or that it is all in your head, because both of those are dismissals and neither is true. Something is happening in your side.

And I am absolutely not going to tell you to stop seeing your doctor. Go back. Say the plain sentence: the scan was clear, the sensation has not changed since February, and I would like to know what the next step is. If it persists or changes, say so. If something new appears, say so. That is not fussing, it is exactly what they need to hear, and they hear it every day.

What this page is about is the reading, which is a separate thing from your body and is doing a separate kind of damage.

You are not being dismissed by God, whatever a letter did or did not settle. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and nearness is not conditional on a diagnosis being confirmed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in that kitchen at eleven with a woman and a phone.

The verse names an exchange, not a technique

There is a passage in Philippians that is quoted at anxious people constantly, and it is usually quoted as an instruction to stop feeling something. It is not.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.Philippians 4:6-7

Look at what is actually being described.

Let your requests be made known. Not resolved. Not answered on the spot. Made known, which is a handing-over word, and the whole of the instruction on your side ends there.

Then the second half, which is God's side: the peace of God shall keep your hearts and minds.

And notice the description of that peace. Which passeth all understanding. Not a peace that comes because you have understood the situation. A peace that arrives without the understanding arriving, which is the exact thing you need, because the understanding is precisely what nobody has been able to give you. I have no authority to say that by myself. Scripture carries it in Philippians 4:6-7, and the Holy Spirit carries it to you.

You have been trying to get to peace through understanding. This verse describes peace bypassing it.

You are not going to be given rest by an explanation. Scripture says the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus, Philippians 4:7, and the peace is described as arriving without the explanation rather than after it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does that keeping in a body that has not stopped signaling.

What the reading is doing to your side

Here is the part that will be most useful, and it is not spiritual, it is mechanical.

Attention amplifies sensation. That is true for everybody and it is not a criticism of you. A person told to notice their left hand will feel their left hand within seconds, and it will feel like more than it did a moment before.

You have been giving that side of your body several hours of concentrated attention every week since February. That is Scripture's sentence and not mine, Philippians 4:6-7, and it is the Holy Spirit and not this page who makes it true where you are.

That does not mean the original sensation is imaginary. It means the reading has been adding to it, night after night, and that some portion of what you feel at eleven o'clock is being produced by the eleven o'clock rather than reported by it.

Which is why the loop never ends. The reading increases the sensation, the sensation drives the reading, and the whole thing has been turning for months.

You are not stuck in something that cannot be interrupted. Scripture says God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind, 2 Timothy 1:7, and a sound mind is named as a thing given rather than as a standard you have failed, and the Holy Spirit is at work in the gap between a sensation and the phone.

What you are actually asking

Let me name the request underneath the searching, because you have never phrased it and it will shrink when you do. Scripture stands under that in Philippians 4:6-7, and the Holy Spirit does the part no sentence can do.

You are not asking what is wrong with your side. You are asking to be told that you are not going to die of this. It is written, in Philippians 4:6-7, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes what is written off a page and into a life.

That is the request. It is entirely human and it is one that no page, no scan, and no doctor can grant, because nobody can issue that guarantee to any living person about anything.

So the searching cannot succeed. Not because you have looked in the wrong places, but because the thing being asked for is not on offer anywhere in the world. Scripture settles that in Philippians 4:6-7, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it rather than these words.

And that is worth knowing, because a person can stop looking for something that does not exist much more easily than they can stop looking for something they might find.

You are not going to be handed a guarantee by anybody. Scripture says my times are in thy hand, Psalm 31:15, and it is said by somebody with real enemies rather than by somebody safe, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a place to rest rather than a thing to dread.