A heavy-set lady lumbers into the waiting room shortly after I arrive. She limps painfully and wheezes short, rattling breaths. She can't attract the unit clerk's attention - the unit clerk is sitting in the back room, prattling on about her new roller blades - and the limping woman collapses into a chair in defeat, her girth threatening to tip the small chair. "I can't stand for any longer," she whines in pitiful tones: "it's not even the knees, it's the sciatica today." I avoid eye contact. I cannot muster any sympathy; I don't want to bond with her, one sick patient conspiring with another.
Soon the nurse leads me into a small exam room, takes my blood pressure and asks all the routine screening questions. My vitals are perfect and I have no surgical risks. I am a healthy young woman - but there she is, typing in a medical chart that has my name written on it. She is the nurse. I am the patient.
She leaves the door ajar while I wait for the doctor. Other patients plod slowly past my room and I hear snippets of conversation: yes, I'm wearing the sleep mask at night; yeah, the new pace-maker is working all right; my blood pressure has been pretty good lately. Smokers, diabetics, seniors, the obese: every high risk patient is here. And me. We are all waiting to see the doctors who have started their rounds an hour late.
When the anesthesiologist breezes into see me, he looks mildly puzzled. After going through my history he concedes, very kindly, that bad luck has brought me here. He tells me that I am a young, healthy whipper-snapper; the odds are in my favor; they'll manage my pain and in a few years we can look back on this whole thing and laugh. Don't worry.
I can't stop worrying, though. It's one of those days where it's hard to gather enough damned energy to be optimistic and brave. At the end of the day I am a patient, and that's really, really tough for me to deal with. But my mom and sister-in-law let me cry in public, give me a hug and buy me a latte. Dan makes me a great dinner. And in a gesture of sublime animal intuition, Marvin gave me his most selective demonstration of love: my first kiss on the eyelid.
Healthcare providers make the worst patients, don't we? Not necessarily in that abusive, screaming-into-the-hallways, refusing-to-participate-in-therapy, taking-a-swing-at-the-lab-tech kind of way, but we certainly don't cope well with being on the other side of that patient/provider paradigm. I can totally see where your thought process is coming from. It's so hard not to compare yourself to those other patients walking (or wheeling) in and out, especially the ones whose illnesses or injuries are partly their own doing, even though that's not remotely the case with you. That healthcare provider mentality kicks in when you think to yourself "Wait, I'm supposed to be the one who has enough health and strength and mobility to spare that I can afford to lend you some to make up for what you lack! Wtf is up with this??"
ReplyDeleteIt sucks. I don't have any magic words that are going to make that feeling suck less, except maybe to say that everyone, at some point in their lives, has to go through something similar and it sucks for them too, so we can all just suck together for a bit. And that thankfully, that sucky part of your life will be temporary, though I'm not sure what the anesthesiologist will think is so hilarious when you look back later... Maybe it's a good goal to keep in mind though; watch out for the stuff that will actually make a funny story in a few more years. :)
That is really sweet of you. Thanks Jackie.
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