Waiting for Doctors

I step out on the walkway, going down to breakfast. The air is cool. I wear a sweater, although the weatherman told me by noon the temperature will be in the 80's. My heart sings to see trees leafing out with shoots of pale green at the tips of branches. Welcome, April! Welcome, Spring!

Except for a visit from son David and daughter Martha, March was a difficult month for me. Besides dialysis three days a week, I had to sit in doctors’ waiting rooms one day each week.

All routine but time-consuming. I wasted one afternoon waiting for my primary care doctor to come in and write new prescriptions. She does that once a year for three pills I take every day. She would not write new prescriptions until she had results of my blood tests. What did she think had changed? I have been taking these same drugs for many years and will continue to take them for the rest of my life.

I taken a thyroid pill each morning for 65 years. When I was a teenager, that was the “drug of choice” for all females who felt tired. Now I know that on those days was when I could not get out of bed and my mother said I was “just lazy,” I was suffering from a severe Depression. It was another 40 years before I was finally diagnosed as bipolar.

About 20 years ago a doctor told me I probably didn’t need thyroid pills, but my glands had become dependent on the medication. To wean me off the drugs would be like sending a heroin addict for a cure. The medication is not expensive, so I keep taking it.

Another afternoon last month was spent waiting for the colon doctor – I spell “gastro-enterologist” so badly my computer’s spell checker can’t find it. After a long session meditating in the waiting room, the doctor looked at the x-rays and said I have the most enormous colon he has ever seen. Then he said what I knew he would say: “We don’t want to do surgery because of your age. Keep taking your polyethylene glycol, and you’ll do fine.”

Every day I mix powder in a glass of water and drink it. I do fine. Why did I have to go to the hospital for expensive x-rays and a month later spend two hours waiting for the doctor to take ten minutes to tell me to continue routine I have followed for ten years?

The worst day in March was the Wednesday that Jackie drove me to the vascular clinic in Dallas to have a specialist look at the graft, where needles are stuck in my arm for dialysis. I was scheduled for 1 p.m. At 12:45 I was lying on the gurney ready to go into the operating room. At 2:30 I was still lying there. Jackie came and asked how soon I would be finished. The nurse said around 5:00. Jackie said she couldn’t wait that late. So I put my clothes on, and Jackie took me home.

The procedure was rescheduled for the following week at 9:40 a.m. I got into the O.R. at 11:00. The doctor found a narrowing in my graft and used a balloon to widen it. The procedure was painless, and I was back home for a late lunch.

Why do physicians think it does not matter if an old woman must sit and wait for two hours after a scheduled appointment? My time is as valuable as any doctor’s. My doctors are the age of my children. They have years to spend however they choose. I am 81 years old. I count my future in days. I want to enjoy every hour.