Being a pessimist can be hard

What should never be hard is being a sceptic. I sometimes get confused about the difference between the two. Earlier this year, after Mrs. Pessimist's annual physical and lab evaluation, she found that all of her blood work was suddenly and totally out of whack. We were both stunned. She was the picture of health and exercised three hours a day. Her cholesterol levels were now in the stratosphere, her fasting blood sugar should have had honey bees circling around her, and her renal function was barely above dialysis levels. Her internist scheduled a cardiology appointment for her and we went together to that visit. The cardiologist was much older than I am, and my last name is Dirt. He ordered a slew of tests, some of which were fairly invasive. I became skeptical. After we left his office, I told my wife that maybe she should repeat the blood tests before she had any other tests.

DUH?......?

I don't know why it took me so long to think of it, but it turned out that when the bloodwork was repeated, everything was normal. I suspect that a lab technician mishandled a vial of blood and Mrs. Pessimist's specimen was replaced with someone else's. By this time, it was too late to complain and try to find where the error occurred. I pity the poor diabetic in incipient renal failure who briefly thought his or her medical problems had miraculously improved.

You don't have to be a pessimist to be skeptical about anything.

(Strangely, when I spell checked this, I found that sceptic is the proper word but sceptical was not, hence skeptical. Now I am really confused. I don't know if I should be a sceptic or a skeptic, which makes me more pessimistic than I was before. Deciding to be a sceptic or a skeptic is hard if you rely on spell check. I think it gets easier to be a pessimist every day.)