verb
- stay where one is or delay action until a particular time or until something else happens
- (cannot wait) used to indicate that one is eagerly impatient to do something or for something to happen
- act as a waiter or waitress, serving food and drink
noun
- [in singular
- (waits) British archaic street singers of Christmas carols.
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Friday night, I had my first CT scan in about a year. Around 10 A.M. I called the imaging center in response to a call the day before from their collection department and used a valid, but old credit card to make a payment on my old CT scan debt...last thing I needed was to arrive to have the staff tell me they wouldn't do the scan because of that past due balance. $139 past due, in the grand scheme of the $100,000 in medical debt doesn't seem terribly worthy of attention, except that last time they wouldn't even let me (or the oncologist) schedule until a payment had been made.
At 2:30, I chugged the first of two bottles of citrus flavored liquid needed for the IV contrast. At 3:30, I drank half of the second, saving the remainder for appointment time. I arrived at the center at 4:15, the remainder of the second bottle in hand. After the obligatory personal information verification, I took a seat...and waited.
My big ass self watched the new Big Gas Savings K-Mart commercial, read about why 'us runners should do a tri' as I thought about my complete abandonment of the gym and healthy eating over the previous bit of time, and I made a desperate effort to avoid eye contact with a coworker who came in while I sat, not because I wouldn't talk but because in this space, I wanted quite intensely to be invisible.
After waiting past my appointment time, I was finally asked back. "So why are you here? Why did doctor order this test?" the tech tossed out, without making eye contact and prepared to click her way through her fancy i-Pad screens.
"I'm here for the scan to check for recurrence signs after being diagnosed with Hodgkins in 2009."
And then she looked up. "Oh, so it's routine..."
A 'yup' came out in reply. I held in the irritation around the word 'routine' because I would be now, and always tried to be, the good patient, a carryover from striving to be the good daughter, the good student, the good worker, the good friend. I always strove to be good out of fear that being bad would make everything worse.
I laid down on the scan table and the process of finding a suitable vein for the IV began. People who do this for a living are either good at it, or they aren't. My godmother, a few years lost to a long journey with breast cancer, was amazing. One stick, vein hit, in and done. This tech, not as wonderful. One stick, left arm, without success and she starts to look at the veins on the back of my hand.
"Please not the hand, if you can avoid it..." I get out, taken over by that person who can talk.
Right side (and verified by post appointment counting): one stick at elbow bend, one stick mid-arm. Then one stick back of right hand. I turn my head and start to cry as she sticks the back of the right hand again. I jump, and cry harder. I apologize.
"No, no. You're there. If we can't get it, we'll just do it without the contrast" I get as I wipe away tears, seemingly a request not to apologize and a reassurance that we'll figure it out. But I feel bad, because I don't want to be difficult and I want the scan to be what the doctor asked for because I don't want to be difficult.
"Is there anyone else who might be willing to give it a try?" I ask, feeling that saying something to get what the doctor wants rather than potentially offending the tech is the lesser of two evils.
"No...and that's what makes me angry. I got behind and everyone else did too and so now everyone's gone," she answers, less angry than I expected. She actually sounds happy. "I'll try it again."
On the sixth try, just a short 1/4 inch above the first try, she gets in. My tears stop and I laugh and reassure her it's totally OK. And it is...and isn't. She asks me when I come again to remind her to go higher than she thinks is right when she's looking for a vein. I make a mental note not to come again for a scan at the start of a holiday weekend and to, provided I can summon up the courage and smush the desire to be difficult, ask who was on last time I came in and make sure I go to someone else.
She pushes the contrast through the IV and warns me of the familiar flushed feelings and the sense that "you've peed your pants." When I nod, she replies "Oh, you know, you know. You've done this before."
She goes back into the room to operate the scanner and I slide in, the contrast that has never bothered me before making me feel like I'm suffocating. The warmth is intolerable and the anxiety continues to rise. I look at the scanner tube no more than a foot above my head and start to cry again, thinking about everything from the scan itself to all of the ways I fail. I recognize as I hold my breath and wait in response to the machine's request that my weight, which had been steadily declining for a year or so post treatment, is growing again and soon, which a close friend had mentioned in relation to her mom's experience with illness, I'd also be unable to fit in machines. I'm sure the fat arms didn't make finding a damn vein any easier. And I cry more.
The tech comes out and removes the IV and reminds me we have two more passes through the machine before we're done. The warmth of the contrast is slowly going away. I want to close my eyes, but I can't, so I stare, blankly ahead at the numbers on the disk inside the scanner until they fade into the swirl of metal and the air in the room and the hall and the building and the city and the state until, at end, every thing's blended into the ocean.
I gather my things and head out. When I get in the car, I start to cry again. And I'm shaking. I can't stop the shaking. For hours, I can't get warm enough. The warmth never gets below the surface of my scan. It is and isn't about the scan. The shaking feels mostly like waiting...mostly like the space between attempt one at getting the sample when, years ago, I went for the bone marrow biopsy and the second, thankfully, successful attempt. The tears were the same then too. Crying in the space between. The shaking feels mostly like the space between the phone call and going to the police station when I was in 8th grade. The same year I spent drinking water with lemon for meals. The police asked us to come in for questioning because an anonymous report had been made to whatever the child safety line equivalent was at that time. It was in the waiting I felt the worst. The wait before my father came home. Then the wait that was the van ride there. Then the wait to talk. Then the wait between each subsequent meeting with the officials sent to talk to me at school. Then the wait until charges were dismissed. I've spent much time waiting for the pass.
The incredible effort it takes to blend what is so expertly that the future disappears, and with it the threat of what could be. It diffuses all of it into a tolerable energy. A quiet vibration.
It shouldn't be long and I will hear from the oncologist with the results of the scan. I see her again for an appointment the end of June, provided of course the scan doesn't show anything questionable. She wanted me to be 15 pounds down from the last visit when I saw her again. She also wanted me to have scheduled and gone to the gyn. Likely, neither of those will happen. The first is an impossibility unless, of course, I go back to the water with lemon only at all meals like I did back in 8th grade. The second, well, I certainly could (and know I should) make the appointment, but right now I just can't.
So while I wait, I'll be trying to expertly blend past and present and future in a way that enables the quiet vibration, crossing with care, between...
This is routine...
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