Today as I cycled toward yet another Addenbrooke’s appointment my progress was thwarted by throngs of Elizabethans cluttering Trinity street, with police escort. I sighed and paused to let the trucks full of movie equipment pass, then dodged through crowds of women in long velvet gowns and men in metal helmets.
When I stopped for tea in the market square the friendly chap on the stall inquired what I planned to do with such a glorious day; when I informed him that I was going to a surgery clinic at the teaching hospital his eyes widened and he asked What will they do to you?
I shrugged the reply Nothing. Though I still have to go.
I was right; the appointment was a routine x-ray examination, with an obligatory short conversation with a person who may or may not have been a surgeon (doctors and surgeons have different professional titles and I can’t keep the facts straight).
I might claim that it was surreal that, after reviewing my chart, she asked So you have had lesions in your jaw?! in a shocked and perplexed voice, even though my records clearly state that I’ve had at least half a dozen surgeries for that particular anomaly. She had never met anyone with the genetic disorder, never encountered anyone like me, ever.
I’m used to conversing with baffled medical personnel, and I know how to read my own x-rays.
I patiently pointed out the areas where the tumors grew (easy, that – look for missing teeth and bingo!). Old scarred bits are the grayish areas. New tumors are clear circles.
Here in the UK they always, without exception, treat me with tender concern and ask if I have any questions. I try not to feel exasperated when I give a cursory No.
Why would I have questions for someone who has never met a live human with the disorder? I’ve been living with it my entire life. I’m the best expert available.
But again, that is all routine. The new and interesting bit was the fact that the walls of the examination rooms featured signs that read It’s okay to ask! with a picture of hands being washed.
The small print informs patients that they should not feel nervous about asking staff and visitors to scrub. The lack of hand hygiene has been my number one complaint in the hospitals in this country.
Last year when the nurse started taking stitches out of my face without properly scrubbing, I was momentarily speechless, and then my brain kicked into rage.
When the fellow chirped an inquiry about the biopsy I snarled It was cancer,making him jump.
He knew that the results had not been added to my chart and nervously asked why I thought the news was bad.
I retorted Because I have cancer.
It would have been far more effective to ask him to wash his hands, but I didn’t process the information that quickly.
But anyway, my x-ray was clean, the appointment over in less than twenty minutes including the removal and re-installation of earrings never taken out otherwise over the course of twenty-five years, and then I rode the bus back into town, sitting in the front row of the top of a double decker, peering down at bits of the city I never see from the seat of my bicycle.
I checked my mail and was amused to discover that my referral to gyn-oncology finally went through, precisely eighteen months after my GP put in the request. Since every single one of my other specialist appointments were issued within days of the original request, this delay has struck me as particularly fascinating.
In this country they do not do yearly pap smears; there is controversy over the efficacy of mammogram; certain breast cancer drugs accepted as proven elsewhere in Europe and the US are denied as experimental (read: expensive), and a person like me can’t get an appointment for love nor money.
My GP tried, several times. I talked to the clinic directly. Nothing happened until the geneticist intervened. Though to be fair, my GP did recently refer me to the private system covered by my insurance; I just didn’t have time to make the trek out to Trumpington.
I find it ever so interesting that it is easy to get treatment for the symptoms that are not dependent on my gender, and nearly impossible to see a gynecologist. The reverse is true where I come from.
Later I sat on the wall at St. John’s for a bit, watching Cate Blanchett swan around pretending to be Queen Elizabeth. Some giggling undergrads came through the gates all aflutter to have spotted Clive Owen.