Reading the Waiting Room
Patients / Patience
I’ve done time in waiting rooms: Doctors’ Offices, Clinics, Labs, ERs.
I know how to prepare for waiting rooms: 1) bring food and water, 2) bring a distraction, 3) locate patience.
In 2014 I made a five-hour round trip visit twice in one week to a Surgical Eye Center: first to have a thin metal container stitched onto my eyeball, then back again in seven days to have it removed.
(This plaque is a miniature compact, a container. The side facing away from me is made of lead…protecting other beings from the radioactive seeds inside.)
The seeds are packed in the side of the container facing the back of my eye. The radioactivity of the seeds is targeted to destroy the living, growing cancer cells that have formed an ocular melanoma, an ominous little blob of malignant tumor.
I know: “What the Heck!” and “Why Me?”
During the week between inserting the plaque and removing it from my eye, I went home. My instructions were to lie still in a dark room and wait while these ‘hot’ seeds blasted the uninvited guest to smithereens.
No Visitors Allowed, especially not pregnant women or small children.
For me, this at-home, blindfolded, ‘execution-of-tumor-by-firing-squad’ became a week of rich mental and spiritual cleansing. Very loopy, quiet, and gray. Memories bounced through my awareness like slow motion shape-shifting clouds. They nudged and dislodged messy piles of shock and confusion; shook them out of the room, like a throw rug by the door. Shoo!
One memory broke through some static from a hologram, like Obi Wan-Kenobi trying to contact Princess Leia:
Decades ago, my Mother was diagnosed with cancer. It was six years into an awkward estrangement between us and six thousand miles away. She called to ask if I could be there for her surgery.
Yes! I wanted to get clear with her, and was already studying mind/body connections in healing. So I packed some books and got on a plane to Spain.
At the hospital room on Mastectomy Eve in Valencia, Mom and I closed our eyes and imagined armies of white blood cells attacking and destroying the confused cancer cells that had set up camp and were multiplying in one of her breasts.
This mental exercise was from O. Carl Simonton, an early thinker/doer in cancer treatment at the time (mid 1970’s.) He called for intentional visualization by patients, to reinforce the body’s natural response to the invading disease. He also counseled full cooperation with whatever treatment the patient and doctor had agreed upon. Lumpectomy, mastectomy, radiology, chemotherapy, prayer, whatever.
The next morning, the Spanish doctor reported that Mom’s beneficial white cell count had increased remarkably overnight. “¿Sera posible?” “¡Increible!”
He was surprised, and had no explanation. Mom and I grinned and squeezed hands. I gave her a peck on the cheek and winked as they wheeled her away to surgery.
While I waited, I made a simple design to try to illustrate what I was understanding about Spirit-Mind-Body-Reality. Hard to prove. Hard to even find words.
Mom’s procedure went well. The Doctor was pleased and Mom sighed in relief as he explained the post-op details. I was invited, actually expected, to stay overnight in the room with her. It was customary for a family member to be present and responsible during recovery. An unheard of accommodation in the U.S.A!
A nurse drew my attention to a hefty canister on the floor with a tube that seemed to be connected to Mom. Nurse pointed to an amber light that would come on to signal that it was time to turn the thing upside down. “¡Dar Ia vuelta! Dar la vuelta!”
I didn’t understand the language or the logic of this, but it was clearly important to be done correctly, at the proper times overnight, to keep my Mother alive and well!
Then came another unexpected rite-of-passage. I had noticed a glass jar lying on the pillow next to Mom’s neck/shoulder. No idea what it held or what it was for.
Mom translated the Doctor’s instructions for me: They’ll call a taxi and give you an address and the lab order. Just deliver the jar and come back in the same taxi.
Huh? ¿Repetir, por favor?
Apparently, it is also the family’s responsibility to transport the diseased tissue to an off-site lab for analysis.
Well, this is a foreign city and I don’t speak Spanish. What if I get lost? What if the taxi driver is involved with sex trafficking? What if they expect money at the lab? What if the lab is an illegal drug business? Who could I call? Shouldn’t someone go with me?
“No hablo engles…”
Okay,Think Nancy Drew.
I climbed into the cab and we crawled through cobblestone streets of ancient walled buildings, past women with buckets, mopping in front of heavy doorways, waving to the taxi driver. We stopped at a door that said Laboratorio del Something. A smiling, nodding woman took my paper and the jar.
“Buenos dias,” we said. She and the driver waved and greeted. I got back in the cab and returned to my Mom, who was sleeping off the anesthesia.
In a few days we parted lovingly, our relationship mostly repaired.
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Thirty-five years later, during my week of radioactive therapy at home, remembering Mom’s experience with cancer brought back a calming sense of acceptance and trust in things I didn’t understand.
I watched with almost neutral curiosity, observing various hallucinations play out in my brain. Different chemical and electrical reactions were probably kicking in. There were lights and sizzling sounds, buzzing and humming and tapping.
I heard myself calling out ‘Questions’ to Jeopardy ‘Answers’ that hadn’t been announced yet on the TV in the next room!
In pitch darkness, I saw something in the palm of my hand and recognized a tiny intricate scene lit up with distinct people and animals. The scene faded when I started to make it concrete with words and ideas. When I relaxed and stopped trying to control it, it formed again as a miniature entity.
Many such phenomena flowed in and out of my ordinary awareness, and it was fascinating and surprisingly comforting. No fear, no worry, no need to know.
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After that week of treatment at home, I returned every month for the next year for follow-ups with the surgeon. It was always a ten hour day away from home. It meant a beautiful morning drive via Interstates through Desert, Farmlands, Forests, Merciful Rest Stops, and finally Ocean Views and the cosmopolitan Medical Complex campus.
The Day of Waiting started with Check-In and choosing a place to nest in the palatial lobby with statues and expensive upholstered furniture…
I tried to capture the Waiting Room characters as well as I could, squinting my good eye, the other protected behind a black patch. I’d catch some expressions, gestures, or postures of my comrades-in-waiting. For today, these were my people.
I could feel the attitudes, the mind sets, the emotions. Discomfort camouflaged with blank stares or superficial scuffling with props: a book, magazine, a phone. The fear. The ambivalence of a long solitary wait with scant hope of relief. Restrained panic. If “Worry is Thought Without Action,” and you have an Indeterminate Wait Time till your number is called, then you’re stuck between a granite wall and a bed of hot coals.
Eventually, we’d get personal attention: measurements and photographs of a diminishing tumor, notes on the condition of the retina, the cornea, the optic nerve. How far and well we could see. How high the eye pressure. Very few words, and no metaphorical small talk at all.
There were individual rooms along a snaking hallway for each part of the exam. Small, white cubicles where we waited, cold and alone.
(I wanted to take a quick look in each shiny cabinet and drawer, but I reined myself in and focused on blurry parts-of-the eye posters. After the first monthly visit, I brought my sketch book.)
While waiting, I could hear the nurses out in the hall, escorting patients to each cubicle to wait their turn. I could hear them guide the Doctor, keep him on course with cards in numerical order, our clipboards hanging on hooks outside each door.
Then footsteps faded, returning nurses to the front desk in the lobby to bring the next patient for the journey to each cog on the wheel of the Merry-Go-Round.
At the end of a long day, returning home, we’re glad to be heading inland, sun setting behind us. No problems. The injections are effective. The tumor is getting smaller. It will disappear with time. With patience. We’re grateful.
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P.S. The pencil sketches of patients were all done at the clinic in 2014. They were enhanced with color on my iPad for this article
Incredible journey. Thanks for sharing! ❤️
Wow! First time I got The Weekly Sher in a long time. I've thought of you and hoped you were doing well. I guess you are.
I'm well and going to move to NH in September. Another big change...
Love and blessings,
Paula