The waiting room

i went into the Dana Farber clinic today for a platelet transfusion. they were still very low (8), while everything else was ok (rbc- 30.1, wbc- 1.1). the good news is that my white counts are on the upswing, and i’ll be out of the danger-zone in the next few days. my body, however, has been really sluggish these past couple of days. its a good fatigue that signals the start of my body’s massive rebuilding phase. the upshot: i sleep for 14 hrs a day.

my platelet transfusion should have taken about 2 hrs. today, however, the clinic was full of people who, i’m sure, decided to move their appointments to the first day after the holiday break. in this mad house, throw in a celebrity sighting: the local sports station (nesn)–who are known to broadcast red sox and celtic games, were at the clinic to pass out t-shirts emblazoned with their station logo and do on-camera interviews of patients regarding their love for navel lint–[tight close up of the tubes running the patient's arm--fade to black; back to you diane].

so what would have normally taken 2 hours, ended up being 7 hours–95% of which was spent in the clinic’s waiting room. the clinic’s waiting room, for those of you who have never had the experience of waiting in a cancer clinic, has a singular way of evoking both boredom and depression at the same time. you wait for your name to be called in a room filled with people at all stages of health (from the perfectly healthy cancer survivor in for a checkup to the recent chemo-naut who is laying limply in his wheelchair–green faced and red-eyed) and at all stages of life (from the 5 y.o. leukemic [immense grief] to the 90 y.o. pancreatic).

the safe thing to do is to keep my eyes focused on the 5 feet of carpet in front of me. but my eyes have a way of being unruly–they dart around the room, and quickly dash to safety when they meet the eyes of another cancer patient, in a quick exchange of glances; an exchange of sympathies; and a sizing up of sufferings. they move from the inconsequential artwork hanging on the walls, to the 3 month old child whose mother is being treated for lung cancer; from the patterned carpet to the new cancer patient who surrounds himself with his loved ones–a face in disbelief; and onto the veteran cancer patient quietly reading the morning paper and sipping his coffee.

the best thing to do is to quiet my mind. but my mind wanders from the profoundest sense of suffering and irony to the conscious efforts to shut all of those depressing thoughts out–an exhausting movement between staring at carpets or staring at corpses; looking at uncongruent paintings or looking at detached expressions.

finally, there are those who i often see regularly–every monday and thursday. i have even learned some of their names. but then, i suddenly stop seeing them at the clinic, and my mind wanders. where are they? what’s happened to them?–as i wait for 6 more hours! that was my day.

~ by lentaing on July 7, 2008.