Onconversations XLI

(In the CT place for my third follow-up scan after Star Wars radiation treatment a year or so ago. )

TECHNICIAN: Please take off your sweater and shirt.

ME: I’m getting to know the drill.

TECH: You don’t have anything around your neck, right?

ME: Nope. Well, nothing physical.

TECH  (laughs, half-heartedly, but then says): Yeah, I asked a guy the same question earlier this week and he said, “Nah–I left my wife at home.”

(I climb on the slab, extend my arms over my head, getting ready to ride the ferry into the doughnut hole of the CT machine.  “Don’t breathe,” the mechanical voice says, sternly, and a green, Pac-Man-esque face appears on the narrow display over my head with his mouth closed, as whatever it is whirls around me. “Breathe”–just as sternly, and the little round face appears with its mouth open, looking very cheerful. The ceiling of this room has a kind of trellis of leaves and flowers painted on it.  It’s less cheerful than bizarre.

Then, I have to go to  another building to meet the radiologist and get the test results. I am not wildly anxious, but I melt a couple mgs. of Valium in my mouth, just to take the edge off the one-hour interval. My wife joins me in the second waiting room. After a while a nurse comes in to fetch us into the examination room.)

NURSE: How do you feel?

ME: Good. Except for this pain and skin sensitivity on my back and lower chest.

NURSE: That’s the radiation. How about your weight?

ME: I’ve put on a few pounds, if anything.

NURSE: Good.

ME: A rale or two from time to time.

NURSE: The radiation. Any difficulty swallowing?

ME: A little from time to time, but no more than I’ve had for some years–a side-effect of blood-pressure medication, I’ve been told.

NURSE: Right. Heartburn?

ME: As a matter of fact. yes, a little.

NURSE: That’s the radiation.  Your last bowel movement?

(Really?)

ME: This morning.

NURSE: OK. Please get up on the scale.

(I do.)

ME: Take six pounds off–I have a lot of junk in my pockets.

NURSE: _______

NURSE: OK, it will just be a few minutes and Dr. ______ will be in to see you to discuss the scan.

(Discuss the scan? I don’t like the sound of that. A few minutes pass.)

DR (enters and says immediately, as he bustles into the room, and with out really looking at me): The scan is good.  (So much for discussion.)

ME AND MY WIFE: Great!

DR: Now about this pain …

ME: It just went away.

DR: What?

ME: It’s really strange, but the pain just disappeared.

DR (getting it, although in fact the pain really did suddenly subside): Ah, the psyche is an extremely powerful organ. But seriously, tell me about the pain.

ME: It’s not a big deal. It’s right below my ribs on the left side, and you can feel a little swelling there. The only time it really bothers me is at night.

DR: Would you lift up your T-shirt?

(I do. Doctor examines my chest and stomach.)

DR: I don’t see or feel anything.

ME: It’s there– it really is. (I try to show him.)

DR (palpating the left and right sides of my lower chest): I can’t feel anything different.

ME: It doesn’t matter to me, now that I know the scan results. Nothing matters except that. But there is swelling there. But really, never mind.

(My wife suggests some possible remedies–a pillow like the one she uses for her back and some medication that she takes. Dr. ________ is skeptical.)

DR: What we can do is try some Lidocaine patches.  I’ll give you a prescription.

ME: If I keep feeling this way, I won’t need anything.

DR: Yes–I’m very pleased too.

(I keep hoping for a truly funny or otherwise bloggable moment, but it doesn’t happen.  Unless you count the fact that on the way home, the crowded crosstown bus–creeping along 66th Street toward Central Park and then Lincoln Center, this bus which would usually drive me nuts with New Yorker-type impatience [the wheelchairs, the walkers, the cell-phone conversations, the sanitation trucks blocking the way, the bulky clothes too early for the season, and so on]–this bus seems to me all jollity and energy and, well, life.)