So...husband's annual post-cancer-surgery checkup includes CT scan and endoscopy. Last year all was negative. Year before, all was negative. This year...a new tumor. The endoscopy was supposed to give a sample for pathology. Last time--when the first tumor was found in his stomach, the first endoscopy produced only gastric mucosa...not a piece of tumor--and had to be redone. This year...same thing. Instead of finding out this week what the pathologist said about the tumor, he's going to have to have another endoscopy, another wait for the pathology report, before he can see the surgeon who'll do the resection.
So not only does he have to go through the procedure twice (and it's not fun, even though he's medicated to the gills) but it takes up a day of my time--he needs a driver to and from, and someone to wait at the facility while they do the procedure. Which means sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a room where I can't get away from the two TVs blaring out on a station I don't like--talking heads talking in ways that raise my blood pressure. Then as soon as he's in recovery, I'm expected to go back and sit with him (he's not really conscious at this point; the chair in there is even more uncomfortable) for close to an hour before he's considered fit to be driven home (about a half-hour drive.) And at home, he has to be watched for 12 hours to be sure nothing's going wrong with the recovery.
Some people may be able to write their day's wordage in that situation, but I can't. I try to knit. I've waited in the car in the parking lot, or in the foyer (the chairs are not more comfortable but there's no TV...just the main door to outside whooshing open and shut and people walking by, which is not a problem. But hospitals and clinics exude tension and worry (and those blasted news-and-talk television stations do nothing to ease it.)
Most of all I resent his having to go through this again. A second tumor is bad enough. A second endoscopy just to get a biopsy of the tumor is...really, really annoying.