waiting

sometimes i dread the waiting room. truth be told, if i could scale the outside wall of the building and rappel down the other side to avoid walking through several time a day, i would. it's not the conversations i'd like to avoid, it's all the eyes.

everyone is there waiting for something they don't want. they're anxious. they're inexplicably bored by the Architectural Digest circa 1998 littering the end tables. they're unimpressed with the accommodations that focus on the pretentious and are a little light on comfort. personally, i say screw the hardwood floors - people need windows, skylights, plants, truly comfortable chairs, complimentary chocolate.

walking through is sometimes uneventful. more often, though, it's a series of greetings - waves, smiles, occasional hugs. it's patients giving quick updates on their cancer and their lives and the book they just read and the pictures from the wedding last weekend. i live for that stuff and the potential of it happening each day is my greatest motivation to keep coming in. if only it didn't have to all take place in the waiting room...with all the eyes...and all the ears. i hate the idea of my sad, just relapsed, sick patient seeing me laughing and celebrating across the room. i hate the idea of not being able to laugh and celebrate with my patients that are looking to me for that.

i was a inpatient for 5 days while in pre-term labor with my youngest. the unit i was on had an interesting mix of patients...some that had just delivered, some whose bodies were trying to deliver way too early, some who had just lost their baby, for one reason or another. outside each private room, the staff would place a picture - their own code to remind them which scenario was on the other side of that door - a blooming rose for the new mother, a evergreen branch for those of us scared and waiting, and a dew drop on a leaf for those grieving. i remember thinking how hard it must be to be a nurse there - to have the happiest day of someone's life in room 8 and the absolute depths of grief in room 9.

the waiting room reminds me of this unit. only there are no botanical cues - only memory and instincts to remind you where everyone is - and what they may need. everyone wants and needs something slightly different from you. it feels like a day's work sometimes to try to give it all.

regret

there’s a lot to be said for being your own best advocate. for knowing as much as you can know. for standing up for yourself. for educating yourself. for questioning.

sometimes there’s even more to be said for listening to the experts. for knowing that all the googling in the world can’t take the place of the thousands of patients this doctor has treated over 3 decades and the experience she has gained doing so. a physician that has devoted her career, if not her life, to one disease. a physician that is looked at as a resource by her colleagues across the country. it’s not that she can’t be wrong, it’s just that she’s worth listening to.

i knew when i met her that her disease was bad. it was the thinning in her hair, the skin color that was indescribably off , the splitting nails, the sunken eyes, the body that looked like it had been fighting a demon for quite some time, despite just being diagnosed. she was an avid life-long athlete, a textbook go-getter, a type A googler who would arrive with printouts and abstracts and pie charts and demands. but over and over i saw her back this doctor into a corner. with her stack of abstracts and an ever subtle whiff of litigation in the air, she would dictate what she wanted, and because it was all within the realm of reasonable, it was all done. over and over i heard this doctor say, ‘there are no right answers, but this is what i recommend’, and she would invariably do something differently, all backed up with evidence of her own.

i’m not surprised her body isn’t winning this one. it almost looked defeated from the start. but i can hear the regret in her voice, and it breaks my heart. she’s doubting choices she made, wishing she had listened more, wishing she had let herself be led.

we’ll never know how, if at all, things could have been different. and quite possibly we are witnessing the best possible outcome for her. but she is regretting sitting in the director’s chair. that is a burden all its own.
that is a cross i wish she didn’t have to bear.