A little more than three months after my last surgical intervention and I am once again wrapped in a blue paper gown, lying back on an examination table as the attending nurse tells me there will be some discomfort and have I signed the releases yet? I have, and I know all about the discomfort. I have been dreading today for weeks.
The internet stories I should not have read say the type of cancer I had often recurs. Why was it necessary for me to get that little diamond of information? A little knowledge is not only a dangerous thing, but one chock full of anxieties. Fark.
I can’t look at the monitor above my head. It is displaying the inside of my bladder in a hundred shades of pink as the good doctor manning the camera threaded up my urethra murmurs, “Hmmm. Hmmm.” The last time he did this, the hmms were followed by a loud clearing of his throat and the words, “I’m going to have to biopsy that.”
I hold my breath. Now he’s sort of humming to himself. Is that a good sign? I try to identify the song. Something cheerful? It sounds vaguely like the music from the Alka Seltzer jingle of the 70s. Plop plop fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is… Maybe it’s Wagner’s Symphony in C Major.
“All done,” he says. “It looks fine, but,” he hold up a large syringe of fluids drained from my body. I hate ‘but’ when it’s dropped like a hair in a bowl of coup. “But, if there are bad cells in here, we’ll have to revisit the area.”
He makes it sound like a trip to Disneyworld.
“Call me at the end of next week for the results,” he adds.
In the bathroom I discard the blue paper thing and put my clothes back on. I’m nauseous, bathed in sweat.
In the examining room I can hear the nurse whistling. Seriously. I can. It’s Gwyneth Paltrow’s Shake That Thing. How appropriate.
No comments:
Post a Comment