Tuesday, July 24, 2007

545 days, 10 hours, 55 minutes, 41 seconds

Wrong again. Which doesn't make her feel any better.

545 days, 11 hours, 31 minutes, 45 seconds

In the doctor's office. She waits for a blood test. She waits for an iron shot. No way in hell she isn't anemic. Shades of her toddlerhood. She looks around the waiting room, but there are no toys here.

545 days, 12 hours, 34 minutes, 38 seconds

31 minutes. Cheney's claim to fame. 31 minutes when he could have pressed a button, picked up a phone, and changed the world as we know it. But, president or not, they kept him out of Washington.

She had her first colonoscopy in 1970. She was twenty-one years old. Used to be, they didn't put you out completely. But the world was different then. There were only steroids to treat colitis. Sedation and the IV were the only things she feared. She, of the round face.

She read an article last summer about how a hospital ran out of colonoscopy scopes, patients prepped and waiting. But even tricky Dick didn't think of that as his hunting ground. Thirty-one minutes, five polyps, none of them malignant. Damn. But she supposes he'll get used to this.

545 days, 12 hours, 55 minutes, 28 seconds

Sixty-six degrees at ten a.m., but going up to eighty. She wears the tie-dye shirt with buttons down the front, the men's shirt, buttons going the wrong way. It's her favorite tee-shirt.

This is the shirt she wore to Philadelphia.

It's a short-sleeve shirt. A no-no, except around the house. But today, with blood tests and probably an iron shot, it will just make things simpler if she doesn't have to undress. And with her face broken out the way it's been since yesterday, she supposes glares won't be drawn to the scars on her arms.

This is the shirt she wore to Philadelphia. It was the same summer she bought the shirt (she'd tried it on the summer before, but it was too small then). Luckily, she lost weight. Luckily, the store still had it. She wore it to Jefferson Clinic in Philadelphia where her father was being tested for Alzheimer's. They'd all been so worried, but it was just an improper use of medication. He was so scared he'd have let them shoot his veins full of poison if they promised it would help. Might help.