Madness is having everything and feeling nothing but fear. Surrounded by the blessings of life, friendship, family, books, film, and other inecapable reminders of happiness, you sink further into carpeted oblivion. Pitifully reduced to a sobbing hypochondriac, you have become trapped in a home you have loved and been loved in for decades. Madness, that seven-letter curse, has turned you into a stranger, a frantic counter of breaths and heartbeats. Sylvia Plath's bit about "the old brag of my heart" has given forth a frantic mantra, "I am, I am, I ams" hopelessly repeated while you pray for good news from the wolf in WebMD's clothing. POTS, cardiac arrythmia, stroke, congestive heart failure - they're but passing fads, nameless faces, different containers to give the anxiety a shape.

No normal ECG/EKG, spotless blood test, or clean bill of health can convince you that you are alive and capable of existing in the land of the living. The "truth" is that you are slowly dying, waiting until the day when “it” happens, the moment you’ll be telling other sick teenagers in the hospital about - the moment when your currently unknown terminal heart condition first reared its terrifying head.

Madness is a midnight meeting between old friends. Those kindred spirits, anxiety and insomnia, have been visiting the same spot for years - you. Clutching the soft spot where the chest and armpit meet, feeling every deliberate heart beat ricocheting through the oak bedframe, immune to the screams of the universe shouting out, “you’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine," it seems you won't be sleeping tonight.

I have no heartwarming, baby-bird-falls-out-of-tree story to tell. I just remember what it felt like putting that Toy Story band-aid on Ms. Trina’s little boy. Life hurts. I think all we can do is make it hurt a little bit less.

Over the years, I’ve seen too many cancer patients and heard too many last words over a hospital bed to believe in destiny. But on the days when the results come back negative, and the bald, little warrior is triumphant, it’s nice to think that maybe the universe put that M.D. after my name for a reason.