i went in, right on time. walked past the receptionist station (the lady who used to be there is now a large young man with orange hair.) i was asked to sign...something. (permission for treatment, i think.)
then i waited.
there were new pamphlets at the patient table. what to eat during cancer treatment. what your prostate cancer means to you. a cancer hat catalog. in the background, i heard the news of the day. (mostly about the traffic situation.... you can't swing a cat without hitting it against a traffic cone.)
soon, i was called back. this nurse was different than the other one i encountered. she didn't react at all to my weight. she asked if i had any scans recently. i told her about the pet, but she nodded in a way that said "oh, i know about that one. i meant any other ones....." so my explanation trailed off, and i shrugged. she understood.
(is it any wonder writers have trouble writing dialogue? we have so many shorthand ways of talking....)
soon, the radiologist burst in. she was glad to see me healthy, and thriving. she liked my blouse, and the thin fabric was perfect for spring. was that a natural curl in my hair? wow.....
after the inspection, she asked how i was. i had no troubles to report. she said she had never seen anything like what i had experience before... she believed everything happened for a reason, so even though the lymph nodes didn't have an irregularities, it was good to remove them just in case there was one small cancer cell in there....
she then called me over to the examination table to look at me. (i had purposely decided to sit on one of the observation chairs, as if to say "i'm not sick. i don't necessarily need to sit in the sick chair.")
as i went to sit down, i heard a small knock on the door. she didn't. i told her, and she praised me for having better ears than she did.
she was soon excusing herself, and running down the hall.
i sat, and looked around. small room. scale. dim lights. beige. very seventies looking. the smell of alcohol. the sound of a dull air conditioner.
sometimes life is a refresher course in memories you never wanted to remember.
the radiologist burst back in. she said that she knew the patient would have trouble keeping her hands over her head... and was trying to make the treatment shorter for her.... in an undertone i said "it's a hard position to maintain, sometimes." and she said "yes... you would know about that"
she raised my arm, and said that it looked good. she then pulled both my arms forward, and compared them.
she didn't like what she saw.
she said she wanted to keep an eyeball on my arm.... wanted to see me in six months. asked me when i was to see the oncologist (next week.) told me to tell her that my arm concerned her, to keep her in the loop.
and... she was gone.
sigh.
so, i walked out of the exam room, with my sheet of paper. handed it to the new girl at the receptionist desk. (the one who made long pauses in her phone message to me....telling.....me.....when my next......appointment was.)
"ah, we get to see you back again in six months."
she scanned my face.
"are you not happy about that?"
"well.... it's different." (resigned, soft voice.)
"ah. different."
and soon i was out the door.
i'm not too worried about things. i can't do much about it, anyway. i just... wish i didn't remember things so vividly when i walked in rooms of the past. it's as if i opened the door, and things came falling out, like fibber mcgee's closet.
one day i need to learn to live with the clutter, and not keep stuffing things away.
soon.
right now, tupperware is a comfort.
sigh
No comments:
Post a Comment