emergency room
Kat :: 10:23 amFriday morning. Doc calls and says she’s puzzled by and quite unhappy with my second round of blood tests. On antibiotics for ten days and my white count went up.
The emergency room was less an emergency than doc knowing that outpatient tests the day before a long weekend will take too long to get results back. We can do all this in one day — all day.
Lots of waiting, questions, the attending doc throwing out scary terms like “lupus” and “fibromyalgia,” the resident looking at me ever more perplexedly as I answer his questions in the opposite way he expected. More Xrays. Another CAT scan, this time with an injection of contrast dye. Dave the tech sticks in the IV, takes six vials of blood, and makes me laugh. Kim the nurse takes my pulse and temp and blood pressure (three times), brings me coffee and two box lunches without the turkey, and looks out for me and makes me feel at least somewhat calm amidst the chaos.
And five hours later we’ve found it.
More scary words. Biopsy. Surgeon.
David tells me that he thinks 2cm by 2cm sounds small. The size of a peanut. To me it sounds gigantic.
Funny. I’ve been hurting less. Coughing more.
My life is out of my control. No one has any control. I need to be in a safe little box and there isn’t one.
Hi. I remembered that you’d said you had a blog, and tonight I went looking to see if I could find it.
decides not to make the peek-a-boo/”surprise!” face with which she amused her one-year-old stepnephew hugs instead
I wish I could make it all better. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make events behave themselves.
And I wish I could offer you that box you mentioned. The best I can offer you is my ears to hear you, my shoulder for you to lean on or cry on, my hands to help hold back some of your pain for a little while, and a space of your own, which you can decorate (or not) however you’d like, in my thoughts and in my heart.
Blessings, and more hugs, to you this night.