My morning case, in which I had to help out the neurosurgeons by putting in a lumbar drain when they couldn’t find the CSF (I mean, come on guys, do I have to do everything around here?? Sheesh!), still finished in reasonably good time.
I should have taken the chance to get to my hospital appointment in plenty of time, take some pain killers in advance and sit around reading a magazine in the waiting room, but with an hour to spare I thought I’d take the opportunity to get to the supermarket and buy some supplies for the new puppy that’s arriving tomorrow. (Did I mention I’d gone ahead and bought the puppy in spite of the strong feelings of everyone else I’m currently sharing a house with against the idea? In fact, you could have used the phrase “vehemently opposed” without overstating the case. I was extremely unpopular for a wee while there earlier in the week oh dear! Here’s hoping the little pooch is very cute and engaging and well behaved so that no one gets to say “I told you so!”)
Of course, as these things go, it took longer than I anticipated to track down all the very specific dietary requirements that Maggie (the name we have given her) has heretofore been used to. Puppy feeding has changed considerably since the schnoodles were young – when did this raw food trend become a thing? I’ve never bought a chicken neck in my life before. Similarly for pet milk. Isn’t that just weird? I didn’t have time to read the label, but who’s milking all these pets? Seems like a lot of hard work. No wonder it cost so much.
Anyway, by the time I’d bought all that, I was running late, and I only had time to swallow my panadol and anti inflammatories as I was racing out the door to my appointment, far too late for it to do any good. My daughter tried to reassure me “it won’t be as painful as childbirth, and you got through that, so don’t worry!’, which was nowhere near as comforting as she thought it would be.
In fact I arrived at the hospital on the dot of my appointment time (Never do this! Be early! Far more sensible!) The receptionist couldn’t find my name on the clinic list, but luckily just then a voice came from behind me “There you are! I’d recognize those boots anywhere!” It was my gyne oncologist friend (no more beating about the bush now ( ! ), yes it’s a possible cancer of my lady parts we’re looking at.)
With hardly any more ado, I found myself in a private room, bereft of my undergarments, knees apart and a microscope focused on my cervix. It turns out both the gynecologist and my husband were right – the procedure that I was there for was virtually painless, but she saw a small polyp which she thought she’d “biopsy” while she was there i.e. brutally rip off with a pair of pliers or similar. That brought the sweat to my brow and a swear word to my lips, I can tell you. Nevertheless, it was soon done, and a few minutes later I was fully dressed and back in my seat. I have another test next Tuesday and then my follow up appointment is in a week. I will get the results then, and no peeking on the hospital computer in the meantime. She was very serious about that – she even put a note on the specimen for the lab not to put the results in my file in case I get nosy and look it up myself. This is one of the risks of having a doctor as a patient. She told me the cautionary tale of another patient of hers, a pathologist, who couldn’t resist looking up her own test results – and she ended up having cancer. So that’s me told.
In the meantime, the painkillers were finally starting to take effect, so I thought I’d quickly ride home on my scooter before I got any more bombed (that’s called logic).
The arrival of my spoodle tomorrow will take my mind off things. I promise to post pictures ASAP.