Skip to main content

If It Walks Like A Duck, It's Probably a Doc

Image

Monday, November 8, 2021

We walked into the Doctor's office for a post-surgical follow-up. My surgeon entered the room and greeted me by bellowing out "Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma!" He had already told me that he was an immigrant to this country, so I thought maybe the strange words coming out of his mouth were some sort of ritualistic greeting and that we were having a cultural disconnect. He then handed me the pathology report, which I quickly scanned. It took me a minute, but I eventually recognized the words on the page as the same words with which he threw open the office door. Only then did I understand that he was giving me a diagnosis by way of greeting.

He immediately called the Oncologist to try and move my appointment, which had been scheduled for the following week, to the next day. That wasn't alarming at all. I asked him if it meant this kind of Cancer requires a sense of urgency.

His rather succinct answer was, "Yep."

I think he was trying to draw a line between his role as Surgeon and the Oncologist's role as treating physician. A surgeon is not supposed to talk to you about treatment, but HE'S THE ONE WHO GAVE ME THE FREAKING DIAGNOSIS! If you're not able to talk to me about, keep it to yourself - just look at my scar and send me on my way!

Unfortunately, after surgery he had told Shawnna that the lab "took a quick look and thought that it might be Follicular Lymphoma, but we'd have to wait for pathology to be sure." Against my better judgement, I looked up "Follicular Lymphoma," which was described as "indolent".

Indolent, adjective
in·​do·​lent | \ ˈin-də-lənt
1 - averse to activity, effort, or movement. Habitually lazy.
2 - causing little or no pain.

If you have Cancer, then having it described as "lazy" and "causing little or no pain" seems like a pretty good deal. Therefore, when my particular Cancer was revealed to be something other than lazy - when it was revealed to be, in fact, quite the opposite of lazy - that particular revelation was a bit of a gut punch. As we left his office, I had to take a seat by the elevator for a brief moment of deep breathing.

Tuesday, November 9, 2021

We met the Oncologist. Shawnna thinks she looked like a duck. Not because she actually resembled waterfowl, but because she was wearing one of those masks that has a duck-like proboscis.

Not my actual Doctor

(Shawnna wants you to know that her actual mask was yellow, which emphasized its duck-like nature.)

For the next two-and-a-half hours we talked to the Doctor, Pharmacist, Nurse, and Lymphoma Nurse Navigator, who wasn't nearly as piratical as her job title might suggest.

Next stop, Chemo!

Labels:
Location: Charlotte, NC 28211, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Everything Up to Today, or how John Cougar Mellencamp gave me Cancer

Everything Up to Today Thursday, September 16, 2021 – Night I have never felt so uncomfortable in my life. It wasn’t the kind of uncomfortable that could be fixed by the fluffing of pillows. I wasn’t in pain. Pain would have been more straightforward, more manageable. This felt as if my body didn’t fit. I spent the night constantly shifting positions, moving from the bed to the floor to the couch and grabbing sleep in twenty minute increments. In the morning I got on a virtual visit with my Doctor. I suggested kidney stone. She agreed. A cupful of pee later seemed to confirm it. By late afternoon Saturday, my symptoms had all but disappeared, though it took me another week to fully recover from the physical stress.  By early October, I started to feel some pain in my crotchal region coupled with some mild swelling. Once again, I saw my Doctor – this time in person. She surmised that I never passed the stone and it was on the move. Not an atypical phenomenon. A “stone search” via CT...
5 comments
Read more

First Round of Chemo, or When I Became Ben Grimm by way of Laurence Olivier

I have always said that once I had kids, I became a better actor because my emotions lived so much closer to the surface. If that's true, then this shit should make me fucking Olivier. I've had numerous moments of emotional fragility over the past couple of months. It’s usually been when I’ve had more questions than answers, and when I’m home alone with nothing to occupy my mind. (Showers are particularly bad.) I do best with information, but I’m being very particular as to where I get it. I’ve been avoiding Dr. Google like, well, Cancer. I’ve also avoided legitimate sites like the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society , or National Cancer Institute . Nor do I pour over the voluminous handouts the various healthcare professionals give me. I figure I’ll only understand about 10% of what I read, and the other 90% will send me in to a tailspin. They enumerate all possibilities from the best-case scenarios to the worst, and one’s mind never fixates on the best, “Clearly, based on what I re...
Post a Comment
Read more

Awaiting the Fallout

“I love you, but you’re going to have to shave that beard.”  I was lying in bed when these words were spoken to me. Though it was not my own bed, I was naked from the waist down save for two pairs of socks, and had only met the man speaking to me the day prior. My wife was there, too, but she was just watching. The sudden announcement was surprising because I was already prepped, and the CNA was ready to administer the sleepy-go-bye-bye meds. Truth be told, I was in surgery about two weeks earlier than anticipated because my surgeon, the man I had met one day earlier, had a cancellation. So, even though my beard was hard to miss, it had escaped any sort of pre-op conversations that would have otherwise been routine. They brought me hospital clippers, and I raced from the pre-op room to the bathroom with my wife valiantly trying to hold my hospital gown closed from behind, ass cheeks flapping in the breeze nonetheless. A nurse lined the sink with a towel, and I proceeded to shave my...
Post a Comment
Read more