Waiting For Shoes

So . . . as I said, I am, at the moment, in remission from cancer, and every four months, I go for a blood test and exam, which are supposed to tell me whether the cancer is back. The whole cancer diagnosis was a big surprise (Nobody ever expects the Spanish Inquisition!), but there’s a special creeping feeling of dread that comes with the every-few-months cancer follow up schedule. I guess the other shoe is still hovering.

After a four-month wait, my second follow up with the gynecological oncologist (gyn-onc) is uneventful. The hospital itself is like a huge labyrinth; you have to remember names (I guess of BIG donors) to figure out which wing you’re going to. Whatever happened to the good old days of following the red/blue/green line painted on the wall until you ended up in the right waiting room?

In this part of the “Gyn Specialties” department, there are always a ton of empty chairs. Go down the hall a few steps, past the blood lab, and you’ll find the OB-GYN waiting room filled to capacity with uncomfortable looking women in varying sizes, all looking impatiently at the wall clock. But the waiting room where I sit is quiet, calm. As I work my way through a People magazine – which, by the way, is filled with stories about celebrities whom I don’t recognize and can’t fathom why they are famous (clearly, I need to watch more television) – I wonder if they keep the pre-and-post menopause patients separated on purpose.

The receptionist comes over to hand me a clipboard with two sheets of paper on it. The first is a list of any medications I’m taking. I leave it blank. I have no prescriptions, no meds at all, and I don’t think they much care about my calcium and iron supplements. The second is a short questionnaire about health issues that may have cropped up since my last visit. I leave those blank, too; in the space for “Colonoscopy?” I barely restrain myself from writing in, “No, thank you.” Any complaints? I think for a second. There’s that slight achy pressure I get after eating – when I eat, which, okay, I don’t really have much of an appetite. Maybe a bit of low back pain; could be our crappy old mattress or the kitchen sink I keep in my shoulder bag. Might be stress.

None, I write in the space. If he finds something, I’ll ‘fess up, but I’m not about to borrow trouble.

This time, the gyn-onc is a little more personable. Our first meeting, in October, was brief and awkward, each of us sizing the other up. I wonder what his initial impression of me was, considering I (1) immediately hit him with a question he couldn’t answer, and (2) took his Well, this is a crap shoot, I’m not going to bull***t you response in stride. What did I think of him? OMG, he’s young! And, Thank heaven he’s not going to bull***t me, ‘cuz, really, this whole thing is a crap shoot.

This time, he wants to make conversation. I don’t. How were your holidays? “Fine,” I mutter, lying back on the table. What do you think of all this snow? “I’m over it” – said as I scootch into The Position. Now, I’m praying that he’ll just focus, because I cannot converse with someone from between my own knees. Not going to do it. He cruises through the potty questions (no problems there), and then warns me that he’s going to do the exam next.

He eases in, like a normal doctor, thumping my back, examining my scar, pressing around on my abdomen. I’m not fooled. Soon enough, he’s murmuring that he’s going to do an internal, and I escape to my happy place until I hear the gloves snap off and it’s over.

Back in our neutral corners, the doctor asks me some follow-up questions (including, “Colonoscopy?” but I’m off the hook for that for another two years). He directs me to go to the lab for my tumor marker blood draw and advises me to call for the results in a week.

All of the questions are on the tip of my tongue. How long after the marker starts to rise would I have before you’d do something about a recurrence? What kinds of symptoms should I, theoretically, be on the lookout for? And the biggie: exactly how does one die of this type of cancer?

But, I don’t know this guy yet, and he doesn’t know how to read me. I don’t want him to label me a complainer, or, worse, a flake. I don’t want the patronizing pat on the head, the simplistic, “Don’t worry about that, many women live long lives with this kind of . . . blah, blah, blah.” Two meetings aren’t enough for me to enlist his aid in building that wall against the possibilities of this cancer. Yes, it may never come back, but if it does, I don’t want it to catch me napping. I have kind of a siege mentality, and right now, I want to know how high the battlements need to be. And I don’t want him to backtrack from his initial assessment: This kind of cancer does come back, usually in the belly; could be a couple months, could be a couple years. That, I suspect, was a moment of total honesty, and anything less than that would mean that this relationship isn’t going to work.

So, I keep quiet, and he reiterates the schedule we’d agreed on last time. He shakes my hand and leaves the exam room. I put my clothes back on.

As I head out of the Gyn Specialties suite, a new band-aid over the puncture in my arm and no closer to any conclusions, I glance down the short hall to the obstetrics side. They’re waiting for shoes, too, I guess. Are their babies healthy? Should the nursery be painted blue or pink? Next time I come, in June, many of them will have their answers. Me, I’ll probably still be waiting for that other shoe to drop.