As an adult, you become responsible for yourself. You buy your own groceries, cook your own food, wash your own dishes, and clean your own home. You call maintenance when something’s not working right in your apartment, like the radiator knocking. The worst part is calling the doctor when something isn’t feeling right. You’re still alive and breathing, nothing alarming, maybe a tiny concern… but what do you even tell the doctor?
You do it anyway. You describe how you’re feeling, as best you can, in the fifteen minutes you have them on the phone. You sigh in relief when they order bloodwork and send a referral for physiotherapist for that stiff neck you’ve been living with. Finally, things are moving and you can get some answers.
You get woken up the next day by a call from your doctor’s office, but he’s not your doctor. He tells you that your bloodwork came back and the results are very low. He urges you to go to Emergency, and that they would be able to help you. You don’t understand the urgency of the situation, so you have a bit of breakfast for some sustenance and slowly get ready.
But you could only move slow. Each breath you take seems finite. You wear the coziest sweatpants, which didn’t take much effort to put on. You make sure you have your phone and your IDs on you so you won’t have to run (or crawl) back for them.
You manage to park across the street from the hospital, but walking across the street still gassed you out three-quarters of the way. You beg your boyfriend for a quick break so you could catch your breath. It’s funny when your body’s telling you something but it gets lost in translation. You need people like doctors and nurses translating for you.
You have shortness of breath and you’ve had a cough for a week now, but you know it isn’t COVID because you got tested not long ago. You tell the screener your predicament, and he makes you wait to be called in. You tell your boyfriend to wait in the car while you find out how long this is going to take and they don’t allow visitors or companions inside because of the pandemic.
A triage nurse calls you in and you describe everything you’re feeling. She says you’ll get some transfusions and you’ll be good as new, but each bag of blood takes about a couple hours and you would need three or four. So you text your man, tell him to go home while he waits and you’ll let him know when you’re done.
You get set up in a room by yourself. A nurse comes in to chat with you while taking some blood so that the hospital can run their own tests. He also asks you to pee in a cup to make sure you’re not pregnant, and the bathroom is around the corner from your room. You make an attempt but nothing would come out, and you come back to the room almost gasping for air.
An hour later, a doctor shows up. He asks you how long have you been feeling unwell and you tell him the truth – it didn’t get this bad until December, but looking back, it may have started in September or even before. He then starts talking about the results of their bloodwork… and you hear a statement you’ve only seen on tv and movies.
“These numbers are concerning because they are consistent with cancer.”
Continue reading “bad blood.” →
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