October 1st, 2012

October 1st, 2012- first meeting with the otolaryngologist.  

I actually wrote about it close to that day, but not all the way:

I sat in that room for, well, for as long as anyone expects to sit in an examination room.  Too long.

I remembered looking a the moon from my checkstand register, out the window, across the parking lot.  Still big and yellow, still considered a harvest moon.

I worded the thoughts of course I can fight, but I want to fight for something bigger than myself than these stupid fucking petty squabbles that I keep on having with myself.

I’m paraphrasing, a lot more expletives thrown in after the fact here.  But I was in that examination room a long time.  I was sitting in the chair, facing the door.  The windows were behind me.  Wouldn’t it make much more sense if, even if there is just a teeny tiny possibility of making someone wait, you had the chair turned towards the window?  I guess it was facing the magazine rack, full of entertainment weeklies and sports illustrated.  The first one, an entertainment weekly with Batman on the cover, was in there crooked.  I didn’t want to read about Batman or all of the other painted flower crap int eh magazine.  And I’m not the sports nut.

And it was then that I was like, why am I sitting in this chair?  What good is it going to do if I am in the chair the whole time?  I guess it could mean that I am obedient and docile other than intimidated.  But shit, I was not wanting to be there, and going through this.  To hell with worrying about being intimidated.  I got up and went over to the window.

And to be fair, there really wasn’t anything to look at.  The parking structure across from me.  The narrow street between buildings.  I could see some trees and a hillside, though.

I still would think, just even seeing the sky, or the light quality outside would be better than facing the chair towards the door.  It was that torture chamber chair, too… bolted to the ground, padded in all the right places so a body wouldn’t get fatigued in a very victim-;like pose.  In a submissive pose.  An I-give-up-all-of-my-protection-and-sign-my-life-away-to-whatever-you-are-doing pose.

Just let it face the window.  Whats the worst that can happen?  A patient will get distracted by what’s outside?  Oooh… big problem.

It was like my grandmother in the ICU.  The bed, facing the door.  Windows behind her—she couldn’t see them.  What the fuck?

I remember when I had geardia as a kid, my bed was facing the windows, and it was wonderful.

  

The doctor comes in as I am leaning on the windowsill, looking out.  Even that, I felt contrite, like a little act of rebellion had been found out and squelched.  I sat down, shook his hand, and we began.

He looked almost exactly like I thought he would.  Dr. Edsel Kim.  Thin, asian man, and pretty young.  He knew how to dress, looking a this black shoes.  Seems like that, and maybe the tie are the only two elements of style a doctor in his office has to work with.  The tie was good, gold and some other color, a little crooked on the knot, but I think ties always look crooked.

He sits down on the stool I had been spinning around and around earlier- mottled pleather seat in greens and blues and greys- colors I like, and I wonder what a jacket would look like.  Then I realize the combination would only work for upholstery.  Now, if it were silk or even cotton- Awesome.

The doctor is there, asking the questions, setting things up, looking at my ears, nose, and throat.  Every time he looks at something, I get a specific past thought of what was wrong- ears- the Eustachian tube thing… nose, its stuffy because of allergies.   Throat… well, that one was a little self explanatory.

He says the throat and nose look bad, so he makes notes asks questions where I grew up, smoking when and how long, specific symptoms, etc.  Then goes over to the impeccable station where all the torture devices are meticulously placed, pulls out a bottle of Lanicaine?  Something like that- I heard the label later.  It was a numbing agent, he sprayed it into my nose, wanted to check my voice box for nodules. 

He then leaves for a bit.

I have always been afraid I have nodules.  Ever since college, when they were explained, and a symptom of them is a gravelly voice.  My voice is gravelly a lot, and I wonder if its more of an affectation than anything- something I do to make myself sound more masculine.

And how Julie Andrews went and got her nodules removed, and now she can’t sing.  Because vocal chords are delicate, and cutting something off of them is really risky, something told to us in college, and I bet was told to Julie before her procedure.  She sued.  Don’t know if she won or not, but it was kind of the end to her pure, pure voice.

Doctor has given me a tissue in case any of the numbing agent comes out.  I sit there with the Kleenex, getting used to the sensation and the fact that he is going through my nose to check out my voicebox.

Numbing agent be damned, this is going to be hard.  And it would have been so much fucking easier if I didn’t see the tool he brought in to do it.  A black wand with a long… and I mean long thin flexible tube with the scope on the end of it.  OK.  That’s going in my nose and down my throat.  Deep breath, it’ll be OK.  And then he demonstrates how the little scope at the end can curl around, like a little worm, allowing him greater visibility, and my imagination a billion different horror movie images about things entering orifices in the face.  I settle on Prometheus, and the worm that wriggled its way down the guy’s mouth.

And off we go.  Thank the numbing agent… in the nose, checking it out, then down, down down.  Feeling weird, like my nose is a separate part of me, and is rufied just to the point where its thinking ‘wait a second… this isn’t right… but not enough to cause a commotion.’  Down, down, into the throat now.  Making “eee” sounds, when he hits something in the throat that makes me gag… that makes me swallow, that makes me want to scream stop.

He does, he is patient, looks around a bit more, goes back into the nose.

That's as far as I got.  I think I meant to go back to it and finish some time, but the memory is pretty plain.

After he messes with my nose, he sits down and talks about the plan- a partial thyroidectomy.  Since they can't figure it out with the needle biopsies they are doing, then they are going to go in and take out half of my thyroid gland- the half with the lump in it- and dissect it, and figure out what the lump is.  there was a lot of talking, a few questions, but I get around to ehat I always get around to in situations like that- that I'm just a bumpkin, and I have no idea what's going on, and I should let the doctor do his thing.

Only that's not all I was feeling.  A feeling of panic was there, and of course i was masking it with vigorous nodding, and my voice getting chirpier, getting more remote how I really was feeling.

I have never had surgery at that point.  I had been in the hospital for serious things, but never any surgery.  And it terrified me.  But I had stopped up everything, going through the motions, a haze of appointment making, and talking to someone else, and meeting Steve in the waiting room and leaving.

Then it hit me.  

I would have to explain it to Steve.  What was going to happen.  I tried to speak, but it didn't come out very clear, and I was holding on, holding on, got to tell him.

I think I finally really lost it when we were just about at the car.  And looking back on it, what made me really lose it was this thought:

"I can't believe what I'm going to put Steve through."

Not what I'm going through, but what I'm putting someone else through.  Anyway, not too long later, i was all composed, mask securely in place, and I went to tell my boss the news.  Not a waver.