A visit to one’s oncologist … the routine kind of visit when you haven’t got any deeply disturbing new symptoms and your best hope is that nobody finds anything the least bit interesting and you get to go home with all the same pieces you had on arrival. A visit after which no one calls to say you need to come back for more tests. The “normal” visits everyone who survives cancer hates, but figure as long as they stay boring, that’s good. “Survivor” as we all know, means “not dead yet,” and that’s the way we want it to remain. Whatever else is wrong with us, as long as the bottom line is “I’m alive!!” we are happy campers, or as close to happy as you can be when one of your primary doctors is an oncologist.

Yesterday was a deferred, re-scheduled quarterly visit.

And wouldn’t you know it, I forgot to stuff my Kindle into my bag. The lab took forever and the only tech they have who can find my good vein was off. I have only one usable vein. If you miss it, good luck finding another that will yield enough blood to run the tests.

The day had gotten off to a roaring start, as it so often does, because we got stuck behind one of the areas super slow drivers. Being as our roads are one lane in each direction, stuck is stuck. Naturally, whoever they were, they were going exactly where we were going … the Milford Medical complex — Milford Hospital and our local Dana Farber outpost. We  tried not to start honking the horn or acting  crazy.

It happens every time we have to go somewhere and need to be there at a particular time. I’m not sure how they know we’re coming, but that 25 mph driver is waiting and will always be immediately in front of us as we try to get wherever we are going, almost always a doctor or hospital. Oddly, we never have any trouble getting home quickly … when we aren’t on a schedule.

We got there more or less on time anyhow, but the lab took a long time. She needed to keep hunting for that vein. She finally found it and I tried not to act as surly as I felt. Probably I failed. I was surly. They never listen to me.  You’d think, having been the owner/operator of this body for 65 long, painful years, they’d figure I might know a thing or two about it, but they always assume I’m either senile or retarded. Maybe both.

We had to wait for the lab. We had to wait for the doctor. Then, we had to wait some more because I needed a chest X-ray and the X-ray tech was in the other building (the hospital across the street) and when he showed up, the software that runs the X-ray machine was on the fritz. I suggested he reboot. He said the last time he did that, it totally died. I pointed out he had nothing to lose: it wasn’t working anyhow.

He rebooted. It died completely. Another tech joined him and they concluded that the machine was (again because this is apparently a regular event) broken. I could have told them that. The reason that there happened to be a second tech right on the spot was because my patient husband, who was sitting there reading his newspaper had realized that his paper was getting wet. That it was raining outside was one issue, but we were in the lobby of the relatively new Dana Farber almost-but-not-quite state-of-the-art cancer facility. Less than 5 years old, anyhow.

So they called the guy to fix the leak (again) because this too was a regular event. They had yet to figure out where the water was coming from. They thought maybe it was coming through the electrical system and leaking out through a lightbulb, leading me to suggest that they could put a lot of people out of their misery by upping the voltage and electrocuting people in the waiting room. The administrative nurse says “Nah, we’d need an electrical upgrade to get the voltage high enough to do anyone in, but maybe they could fix it on the next remodel.”  I love nurses.

I had nothing to do through most of this. Lacking my Kindle, I dug around and found my little Canon Powershot 260, which I carry all the time to handle photographic emergencies. After exploring the contents of the chip, deleting some really bad pictures, I figured I might as well try to see if there’s anything to photograph in the various waiting areas of Dana Farber Cancer Treatment Center in Milford, Massachusetts. That’s what happens when you forget to bring something to read.

Why they have a grand piano in the lobby is anybody’s guess. I’m afraid to ask.

Categories: #Health, #Photography, Life

Tags: #Health, Cancer, Conditions and Diseases, Dana-Farber, Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts, Milford Hospital, Oncology, Organizations