It's Sunday. Which means tomorrow is Monday and the next day is Tuesday. You follow? If not, I suggest you see a doctor. Tuesday was the day I was to leave the 4
th floor of a building on 25
th Street in Manhattan after spending five glorious days with K, all about the town.
Instead, I'll be here, where Spring can't make up its mind, no matter the day.
Speaking of doctors, let me tell you about one I met recently, and why. For about six months now I've had a pain in my hip. It comes and goes with various levels of activity, which I will outline as follows: Sitting typing on my laptop, activity Level 1. Walking to the Park with
Steph and Mare, Level 2. Snow shoeing, Level 3. And so on and so forth. (For some reason the pain seems to be worse when I wake up in the morning, so I guess in a backwards way, sleep is Level 4. Unless I dream I'm an acrobat, you've got me on this one.) My roommates have probably heard me complain about this the most. Side note: I don't recommend spending countless evening hour(s) looking up various ailments on
WebMD when you and your roommates slash significant others slash peeps are in want of an activity. While highly entertaining, it leads to some scary self-diagnoses and some creepy, creepy videos on YouTube. (The good news: they have found a cure for the Tree Man.)
Two weeks ago, the pain was quite bad. I grabbed my laptop and consulted the MD on the Web. By process of elimination (and a few silent prayers they won't make my life into a YouTube video) I had a verdict. Just to be safe, I decided to get a second opinion. Instead of waiting to get into my normal MD (as in an actual doctor, not the
cyber kind) which could have taken days, I decided to take a faster route. I had deduced (having just graduated with a
bona fide certificate of completion from the
Cyber School of Medicine) that a simple x ray would confirm my hip hunches one way or another. Nothing too serious. Six months is indeed a long time to suffer. And a long time to come up with possibilities. In the (way) back of my mind I thought maybe, just maybe it was something serious. But, most likely I figured I no longer have my 16 year-old Sarah Jessica Parker "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" win-the-dance-competition-
and-the-boy's-heart body no mo'.
In walks the doc, white coat, chart in hand, totally 2-legit, right? Her wavy red hair was parted down the middle and held in a low ponytail with a
scrunchie (still holding onto the
SJP Glory Days herself, perhaps.) She had on socks with
birks, very Woodstock-meets-the-early 90's. "So, you've got a pain in your hip, huh? Why do you think that is?" This should have been my first clue. While I believe a good doctor asks lots of questions, I also believe a good doctor has the answers, or at least takes a stab at them. She didn't. "Well, that's why I'm here," I said, resisting the urge to add a "
Doi!" onto the end of that sentence.
Moments later, I limped down the hall with the x ray technician. She looked all but thrilled she's decided to look at pictures of bones every day for the rest of her life. It also (lucky me) happened to be the last day Noah
Wyle would ever be on
Primetime TV, so she was bound to be blue times two. "
Ok," she said from outside the room, adding up the cost of all 12 seasons of ER on amazon.com in her head. "Hold your breath. 1, 2, 3. And...breathe." She led me back to the room to wait for Doc Birkenstock.
In all my waiting, I wasn't quite prepared for what followed. In walks the doc-in-socks. She sits down on the stool and tells me that I'm flat out wrong on my self-diagnosis. This I could take. The next part, not so much. "Well, we didn't find bursitis." Then, with a bedside manner as if I was in line at Subway and she had the unfortunate task of telling me they're out of yellow peppers she adds, "We found a tumor." She might as well have shouted, "Next," and scooted me out the door. If the roles had been reversed, if I had to
equate things in her terms and on her sensitivity level, I could have told her she was at a Joan Baez concert and she left the beer in her VW bus. It seemed about that important. "So," I said, begging for more information, "How
big's this thing...the size of a
golf ball, or what?" "Yup." She nodded in a "Yeah. Sure. Golf ball. Sounds good." way. "Takes up about half your hip bone." So not only have they run out of yellow peppers, but they have run out of them at Subways across the Wasatch Front. I wanted to shout back, "Oh, yeah? Well, the beer's gone, too and there won't be any for the rest of Woodstock. What's up now, Doc?!" Not winning any awards for her bedside manner, she said, "Tumors aren't really our specialty, so I'll set up an appointment for a CT scan tomorrow. That way you can get a better look at this thing." She called it a "thing," as in "it-ain't-no." Never mind the large mass taking over your hip. She stood up off the stool and strode out.
* * *
Long story short, or long story long*, and to avoid a barrage of questions, I'll add that this Doc wasn't exactly right. We're not sure who to blame. Perhaps the x ray tech started her Series Finale ER Mourning Party a little too early that day and had drowned herself in her own tears, making the x ray unclear. There was a total misdiagnosis. I can obviously (and, more importantly, gratefully) laugh about this now, but it was a stressful week as I thought I had a golf ball-size tumor on my hip for eight days. I'll finish the rest of the story and bring everyone up to speed soon. As for now, know that it's not a tumor, and I wasn't that far off the mark on my self-diagnosis.
*Shout out to one of my fave John Krasinski You Tube videos. Search "John Krasinski car breaks down," if you're interested. (Well worth the 6 minutes and 56 seconds, especially to when he does his Boston car mechanic accent). While you're at it, look up "Thing" on Web MD and see what pops up.
