“Nothing showed up in your urine sample when we looked at it under the microscope, Mr. Seitz,” the doctor at the UCR Student Health Center said. He flipped a page, wrote something down. “Next, we’ll run a blood test.”

Some five weeks hence, I still remember how my throat closed when I heard that. It was the last Monday of September and I was a few days away from starting graduate school. Quite out of nowhere, I had developed a case of sporadic hematuria (blood in the urine). It was bad enough when it manifested itself. Now, adding insult to injury, it had played hooky when I needed it for diagnostic purposes.

The doctor’s suggestion of a blood test was a logical one. There was no discernable blood in the urine, and they needed to test my kidney function. That makes sense. With that in mind, I trotted down to the lab section of the Student Health Center, presented my arm, and gave the sample, right?

Pardon the pun, but not bloody likely! I had fallen prey to a longstanding phobia of mine, and it was calling the shots.