607 days, 21 hours, 4 minutes, 33.3 seconds

She has to feel a certain sense of comfort with her doctors. They don't have to be hot shot, cutting edge, top ten of the top 100 bullies, they just have to know what a scalpel is or when an x-ray's upside down. They have to smile. They have to warm their lips before they touch her, just like Grandma's doctor, just like that doctor when she went away to camp.

608 days, 0 hours, 2 minutes, 42 seconds

Yesterday's news: Avandia, a hotshot medication for type 2 diabetes, has been found to increase the risk of heart attack by up to 64%. Six million people have taken the drug over the past eight years. She takes a deep breath. Six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Six million diabetics. Breathe in. Breathe out. She can feel the cancer in her lungs now.

And how close, she wonders, did she come to taking this? Five years fighting off medications, then relenting. Glucophage, then Glyburide for a few brief days, now back to Glucophage. Avandia was never even mentioned. Insulin, possibly, for a brief time, if she needs steroids. On and then off. With a doctor she has complete trust in (not to mention a cell phone number, and a home phone).

And with some other doctor? The endocrinologist at NYU with whom she first made an appointment? The doctor recommended by her gynecologist's nurse? Slowly but surely she's learning her nose is a dog's nose, cold, dripping a bit, but on the right scents. A dog tied to a tree out behind a little dollhouse, perhaps. Safe in Allstate's hands.

Google turns up 1,231 stories on Avandia. Yesterday's news.