After my part with Dr. E. was over, and he handed me a packet full of information and several prescriptions, I went with Kris to another room where she went over everything in the packet one piece of paper at a time in an attempt to make sure I understood everything. While I appreciated their efforts, most of this time was lost on me because I was well beyond overload and drowning in a sea of shock. I know I asked her some questions but I can’t recall what I asked or what she said and so much of the day’s events flew out of my head the moment I walked out the door.
I left the office with the bittersweet thought that maybe, this time, someone believed me and was going to help me treat these problems. However, now that a medical expert appears to believe me, and be willing to treat me, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I wasn’t prepared to be believed, as I haven’t been believed so freaking many times before. I was prepared to argue with him and guilt him, if necessary, into removing my ovary by reminding him that he took a Hippocratic oath to do no harm and by leaving my ovary in place, he was, in fact, guilty of doing great and irreparable harm. I never got the chance to deliver that impressive speech though, because he claims to believe me.
I’m still doubtful though. Maybe he will give up on me once he realizes I am too poor to pay for his expertise. Maybe he will say adios when I can’t afford the treatments.
Maybe it really is all in my head. Maybe I gave the wrong answers to his questions, to his probing, to the exams. Maybe I failed the exam. Maybe we could do it over again and I would get the answers right this time and I would be cured. Maybe we could just go back to when it was all in my head.
Somehow even I doubted those delusions of grandeur.
The drive home was in a dangerous haze. All along Route 22 people kept cutting me off, and for one of the first times in my driving life, I didn’t care. I didn’t flip a single person off. That’s a surefire sign something is wrong with me!
I kept replaying bits of the conversations in my head, this diagnosis and that diagnosis but when that made the tears singe my eyes and obscured my vision, I switched my thoughts to marriage and what I would tell my partner. I fantasized about going to city hall sometime that week and never telling anyone that we got married, although I couldn’t figure out how to explain how all my medical costs were suddenly being covered. I tried to imagine my family’s reaction when we announced, before Thanksgiving dinner, that we were in fact going to get married. That we were doing this because I needed to use my partner to get health care coverage and all of you people who don’t support health care reform in this country can kiss my ass and aren’t invited to the wedding! I didn’t think that approach would have good results either. I imagined the nightmare of planning my family’s last wedding and his family’s first wedding and my head throbbed with a new pain.
As I drove past my partner’s office, I fought the urge to text him from the parking lot that he needed to leave work immediately and take me the remaining 4.5 miles home. Instead I kept driving. Kept trying to keep the tears at bay. This was definitely going to violate my strong policy of only crying once or twice a year goddamn it!
Somehow I managed to get myself home, take care of the cat’s needs, pee yet again and get myself situated on our back deck, thinking that the view of the river might soothe me. I managed to bring out a blanket, my new packet of medical information, a glass of water, box of tissues and a box of chocolates (screw the fact that they are on the new banned foods list!) before bursting into tears.
My body shook and shivered. My tears fell and my sobs caused the fisherman, whom I was clearly bothering, to move further downstream so I didn’t scare his fish away. To me it felt like an eternity that I wailed and shook, cried and felt sorry for myself. In reality, it probably only lasted less than a half hour. I’ve never been much on crying, probably because when I was a kid and I cried after a punishment, I was told that if I was going to cry, I’d be given a reason to cry, which of course meant that something much worse was in store for me if I kept it up.
I tried to process all that was said, all that had happened. I tried to figure out what to do, how to go back in time and tell the doctor I made it all up. And then the pain in my side flared up again and sent me doubled over in agony, even as I tried to deny its existence.
I tried to decide what to tell my partner. I imagined him coming home and my saying, “Hey honey, do you want to marry me?” before bursting into a fresh set of tears at how romantic that sounded. I tried to figure out how I was going to pay for all of this and if it was better to mooch off the system or my partner.
A few months ago I qualified for charity care through the hospital where my partner works, thanks to the suggestion of my gynecologist. This benefit covers “medically necessary costs”, for those doctors and services who participate in the system. I later learned that my physical therapy would be covered 100% but my medications, any necessary medical equipment and my visits to Dr. E. would not be covered. If we got married, maybe more of my expenses would be covered. Maybe not, I didn’t know much about his policy.
I thought about getting a job…as if it were that easy right now…and I wondered if I even got a job, if this would be covered or if it would be denied as a pre-existing condition. If I got a job, I would make too much money to qualify for charity care and then I would be stuck either with more bills I couldn’t afford to pay or I would have to forgo care that I needed but couldn’t afford. And, if I got a job it would have to be one where I didn’t have to sit for more than 15 minutes at a time, where I could pee at least once every hour and where I didn’t have to stand for more than, say a half hour at a time in the same place or my pain would be unbearable most days. Exactly what the hell did the qualify me to do in an economy where at least thousands of people, healthier people, could vie for the same job?
Somehow I ran out of tears and managed to text my partner, who happened to be on call all that week, to see if he could get someone to cover his shift for a few hours. He got back to me immediately, saying that his boss would do it and she was fine with him leaving right away.
When he got home I had managed to wipe as much of the snot off my face as I could but it was still obvious to a blind person that I had been crying. He asked me what was wrong and gave me a big hug which only caused me to cry more…something he’s rarely seen me do. I tried to tell him what was wrong, but I couldn’t remember most of it so instead I tried to assure him that although I had a lot of problems, none of them were life threatening, merely quality of life threatening. He was visibly relieved since on the frantic drive home he thought I might have cancer (even if I did, I doubt I would know that after a 3 hour initial office visit.).
I tried, through tears and frustration, snot and stumbled sentences, to relay what had happened. In the end, I thrusted the packet of information into his hands and then got annoyed when he tried reading it instead of comforting me! I didn’t know what to do and he didn’t know what to do and I sure as shit didn’t know what I wanted him to do, so slowly, painfully, we began to discuss our options.
We began to discuss the “m” word.
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