Last Minute Testing Part I

Monday morning the alarm on my phone starting singing Cee-Lo Green at seven am. I lay in bed listening to the song play through as I fought the urge to reset it for an hour later. No choice this morning, though - I had an important date. Reluctantly, sadly, I threw aside the thin sheet that separated my body from the hot summer air that hung in my room like a blanket, the air conditioning useless on the second floor of the one hundred year old house. A frustrated fan in the corner accomplishing nothing but a carousel of humid heat whirling around in useless circles.

I took a cold shower in the huge bathroom, shaving my legs with the razor I brought to avoid the Costco buckets of dark blue, plastic disposable razors that cut my ankles and knees. It was shorts weather, not jeans.

An hour after waking up, I was out the door, borrowing my dad’s car to drive the forty five minutes in traffic to my neurologist’s office. I was early, but it gave me time to fill out the quality of life questionnaires, and I had a book to keep me company for the twenty extra minutes I had to wait.

Finally I got into the office, chatting briefly with the doctor who has treated me since I was eighteen, and whom I absolutely love. I touched her finger and touched my nose; walked on my toes, heels and feet end-to-end; pointed to the moving hand; held my extremities still as she pushed or pulled; stood still with my feet together, arms up and eyes closed; and passed the reflex tests.

When we sat down, I told her about my headaches. I’m having them a few times a week, each of varying degrees of strength and duration. Sometimes two extra strength Tylenols do the trick just fine, sometimes they hardly do anything and I spend three hours on my couch with a cold pack balanced lightly on my head. She looked concerned. I asked her if that was normal since there were people with knives in my brain a couple months ago, and she replied that I had a very extensive surgery and that it’s going to take a long time to recover. Still, she picked up her phone and dialed a few numbers, not enough to be an outside call, so I figured it was an extension. Someone answered, though I couldn’t hear their voice through her ear piece. Then she asked about an MRI - could they do one today? Tonight? She looked at me as she asked them about availability. I guessed I had my evening plans decided for me and they didn’t include meeting my friends at the neighborhood bar.

“Seven? Okay, I can stay around until then”, she spoke into the small microphone that hung from her ear to her mouth. Hanging up the phone, she told me that she wanted to get an MRI done before I left town the next day. She didn’t say it, but I knew that she was wary of the headaches. She said I should have blood work done as well, since there might be something like low hemoglobin or high medicine levels causing my extreme fatigue.

We said goodbye and I promised to go to the hospital and get my blood drawn on my way to my seven pm MRI. She walked me to the waiting room where she handed me the blood work order and asked her assistant to schedule an appointment for me in July. I put the date and time in my phone and set twenty four hour and one hour reminders.

As I turned from the windowed desk, a man in light blue scrubs caught me and said that he got the MRI moved up to noon - in one hour.