Friday, December 15, 2017

Maintenance



  
        With a lifetime of head-to-toe freckles, I’ve given little thought to any new spots that arrived.
Age spots? Nope, must be another freckle.

          So what if every time I turned my back on my daughter in a bathing suit she would blanch and ask when I last had a check-up. My primary care doctor checked me regularly. It wasn’t until a relative stranger in a pool last year asked me the same question that I decided perhaps some action was in order.

          I now have a dermatologist, a friendly lady who zipped right past all the dark islands scattered across my back and found a small innocuous white bump that ultimately was biopsied and then carved out.

          Yesterday I went for my six-month check up. I arrived a bit early, so I settled into the waiting room and read all about celebrities I’d never heard of who were divorcing and/or entering into new liaisons with other celebrities I’d never heard of.

          My name was called and I was ushered not into an exam room, but another waiting room, a sort of medical limbo. If the intent was to fool me into thinking I was progressing through the office system, it wasn’t working.

          I finally achieved an actual exam room where a nurse updated my records and gave me a thin cotton garment. These are not robes, or gowns, as medical people optimistically call them - they’re sleeveless objects with the thickness of one of your better brands of facial tissue. And mine, with one normal tie at the neck and a second one-inch stub to tie to it, had been assembled by someone with a dark sense of humor.

The high yesterday was 26 degrees and evidence of that was seeping into the room.  I sat there, waiting, clutching my scrap of cloth, my feet and everything else getting colder and colder by the minute and told myself, “the doctor is coming. . .now. . . . No, the doctor is coming.. . . now.”

She finally did arrive and everything checked out fine.

But now I’ve had a taste of my dog’s life after I close the door.

         

15 comments:

  1. My dermatologist and I have a had a long and warm acquaintance and I do mean warm. She sets me afire with liquid nitrogen (I believe) every 4 months or so.

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  2. I simply put a number of garments back on, after the seer cotton gown. They'll come off again when the doctor needs to look. If I've really planned ahead, everything I wore in buttons or zips up the front.

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  3. I am so glad that everything was fine.
    Our dermatologist has the most horrendous waiting time I have ever experienced. A six hour wait in this office is not uncommon. And if you ring the office before hand and ask 'is he running to time?' his well trained staff say 'perhaps a twenty minute wait'. Sigh.

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    1. Yup. He overbooks. And runs from patient to patient. And it infuriates me, but he is the only one in town.

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  4. I have had so many new growths that I even pay to have some removed these days!!

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  5. I just had a run-in with a gun, too: a liquid nitrogen gun that burned four spots on my face. They will heal, and once I got into the room to change into a skimpy gown, the nurse asked if I wanted a heated blanket. Well, yeah! :-)

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  6. I've never been freckled but have developed a few tiny 'freckles' as I get older. I'm planning a check on all of them early next year. And then a yearly check after that. Australia is the melanoma capital of the world, I'm told.

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  7. That was THE BEST description of a medical "gown" ever written. I'm glad all is well and you can rest easy. -Jenn

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  8. I need to go as I've developed a few actinic keratosis on my face. looking for a new one though as the young woman I have been seeing wants to push a line of cosmetics and skin products.

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  9. Well, I'm glad everything worked out fine! After my dermatological adventures last year I can definitely identify.

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  10. I love how you write. Your description of things is amazing...just the way we all have felt waiting for the doctor to come in. Glad you are okay.

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