11 April 2013

Fourth of July


BAM!
My surgery is scheduled for the fourth of July. Almost perfect! It feels right to know that while I’m having a long nap  – there are picnics & parades -  and fireworks filling up the sky.

However, the Fourth of July is four months away, and I’ve already waiting a long time, longer than the 6-12 months recommended by Dr Escargot. Last week I tried to reach his secretary to tell her that the wait was excessive, and I wasn’t being as ‘carefully monitored’, as I had expected to be. I spoke only to her answering machine. Monday morning I tried again, and realizing that she would never call me back, went down to the hospital and walked into her office.

BANG
‘Oh Hi!’ she said as though I’d just joined her lunch table in the school cafeteria. ‘Dr Escargot isn’t here right now. But he’ll be back in an hour. Want to wait?’ Damn right I wanted to wait, and I did.  I waited in the waiting room in order to tell him that I was tired of waiting.

KABOOM
We had a pretty good consultation, went over past treatment, and he agreed that we should try to speed things up. I told him that I needed to be more closely monitored, and he agreed it would be a good idea to get a mammogram. He filled out my thing-y I needed to bring to mammogram-land to book an appointment – and wrote in the bottom ‘ASAP’.

I walked over to mammo-land. They asked if June would work. I rolled my eyes. She scrolled through her appointment book and said ‘April 18?’ I told her I’d be out of town, but said, ‘I’m free tomorrow’. So she scrolled some more, made a little frowny face, and said, ‘8:30?’
Done! 

What followed yesterday morning was a mammo, then another mammo (they found something suspicious that turned out to be scar tissue) and finally an ultrasound that brought back so many bad memories that I nearly leapt off the table and ran down the hall topless, and covered in jelly. But I didn’t.

I went to straight to Escargot, who had already read the mammo online, and talked to the ultrasound doc, and said everything was absolutely clear. ‘But,’ said Dr Escargot in his soft Spanish accent, ‘We are steel going to try for an earlier date’.

Fine. Half of me just want to get this over with. But the other half wants to celebrate Independence Day by being independent of my old breast tissue. Psychologically, I also like the fact that there will be so much going on with our neighbours to the south that it makes my surgery seem smaller (And more manageable) in comparison.

But mostly I just want fireworks.


2 comments:

  1. I commend your assertiveness and am learning from you. A big congratulations on finally getting the date!

    ReplyDelete