Bloody Hell... Literally
Part II of the Colonoscopy Chronicles
My mind went blank for a few moments. Up until that point, my only experience with "serious underlying health issues" had resulted in the untimely death of my mother three months earlier. It didn't help that mom's diagnosis was also born out of a routine visit to the doctor for a harmless urinary tract infection. I immediately began catastrophizing and figured that it was only a matter of time before I was being buried right next to her. "My poor dad" I thought.
I made my way out of the gym and called my dad from my recently acquired cell phone to tell him what had happened. Understanding full well what "serious underlying health issues" could look like, he rushed to the school to pick me up. As we rode in the car, he asked me if I felt sick at all. Other than the gut ache I now had from the stress and worry created in the last half hour, I felt completely normal. Instead of heading directly to the emergency room, we first called our family doctor in Salt Lake to see if he could offer us a second opinion. He generously cleared his schedule and told us to come right in.
Less than an hour later, I found myself sitting in a dank little room wincing at the sound made by my shifting weight atop that crispy, doctor’s office butcher paper. The place hadn’t changed at all since I had last been there as a seven-year-old. Everything from the musty smell in the slightly humid air to the sunken pirate ship in the fish tank out in the lobby triggered memories of tongue depressors and reflex tests. I was staring at the ground speculating about the source of the massive stains in the 50-year-old carpet when the doctor poked his head in the door and said, "just finishing up a circumcision down the hall, be with you in a second". Uncomfortable with the image now in my head, I re-directed my attention from the floor to the wall, noting it's peeling wallpaper. The doctor’s medical license and PhD hung crookedly from small nails. The documents indicated that he had started his medical practice in December of 1986. "I was born in December of 86" I thought to myself. "Dad, did this guy do my circumcision?" I asked. "Yup! He sure did" he replied enthusiastically. "I think it might have been done right here in this same room" he continued. "Maybe I was his first snip!" I said half-jokingly as I subconsciously placed my hands across my lap.
The door opened and the doctor stepped in. He pulled out his rolling stool and sat down facing both of us. “So tell me what's going on" he said. I explained what had happened in the gym and handed him the paper with my blood results on it. He seemed to understand the concern and confirmed that an 18% hematocrit count was indeed abnormally low. He asked if he could take a couple vials of my blood to run through his own machine. He explained that the extra blood would give him more information which he hoped might point to some answers. I agreed to the blood draw and within a few minutes, found myself being prodded by the second nurse of the day. When the last vile had been drawn and the nurse left the room, I felt woozy and afraid to stand up. The feeling only increased my worry about a "serious underlying health issue" as I knew that having just three tiny vials of blood drawn should not have made me feel so weak.
When the doctor returned, he wasted no time telling me that something was indeed "off" but that he wasn't totally sure what it could be. He didn't have the equipment in his small office to run further tests but recommended we visit the hospital where they would be able to further gauge what could be going on. Before he left the room, my dad asked him bluntly, "with the info you have now, what do you think we could be dealing with here?". He hesitated to speculate but having been in attendance at my mom's funeral himself, he knew the reason behind our probing for more information. He proceeded to tell us both that it was too early to know anything for sure and that it could be a myriad of different problems. But, "if you are asking about the potentially scary side", he said, " in some cases, this can be indicative of problems with bone marrow or in some cases, leukemia cancer."
He pulled out his notebook to jot something down, but for all I knew, he might as well have been suggesting some grabby openers for the first few lines of my obituary. This would serve as the first act for many subsequent performances in which my hypochondria would take center stage, convincing me that the icy hand of death would soon close the curtain
Part III later. Sorry for dragging this on but we aren’t even to the good part yet.