UnRobbed

November 11, 2007 | Category: In My Life

I cried Uncle.

Yeah, me. Big baby in pink streaked hair.

Made the appointment and went into to see Wonder Doctor, whom I love.

Friday morning, sitting in the chair pretending not to see that vinyl examining table. The one with the hidden stirrups, no you can't fool me.

"You aren't better?" she sighed, with those big compassionate eyes and her 'To have more, want less' button shining under the fluorescent lights.

"It still hurts to breathe, and my hands are going numb more and more often."

"Numb?" asked she.

Turns out, this is a bad combination of symptoms. Not normal Raynaud's.

This, as CD likes to say, is why the woman WITHOUT the umpty years of medical training should leave the diagnosing to the woman WITH it. And make appointments more often.

Hurrumph, I say.

But the next thing you know, it's 3 long hours of testing to be done on everybody's favorite lab rat. It's big machines and it's the hospital annex, and it's an EKG and Ox Sat and it's MANY tubes of blood and it's X-rays....

And it's my poor husband, arriving into O'Hare with no wife to meet him. Just some hastily arranged hired car with a driver that in no way looks like a kissable woman.

The list of what could be wrong with me reads like a script from House, MD so we're not thinking about that this weekend.

Instead, a quiet weekend of to-do's and naps. CD and Bear went off to the Museum of Science and Industry to decorate the Icelandic tree and then to the Bee Movie. And I have stayed home in the moist of a vaporizer, strung together with pills and instructions and my trusty quadrupeds at my heels.

And, finally, in the twilight of the weekend this lab rat's father calling from a Police concert. "Listen!" he shouts, enthusiasm bouncing over the line.

And I hold the phone to my ear, listening to Sting sing in concert 900 hundred miles away. My father holding up his phone like a candle, imaging me hearing it all.

Yeah, Dad, I hear it! I hear it!

The crowd sings along, echoing in my kitchen.

And I join in.

...But I should have known this right from the start
Only hope can keep me together
Love can mend your life....

Life is sweet, even as you wait for test results. Maybe because. He strokes my hair and slips in for a kiss, like the one he missed Friday. We hum songs my dad is dedicating to me from half a continent a way. Bear splashes away in a tub, telling us what he liked about the day.

Damocle's sword swings overhead, we see it there. Let it hang with the homemade snowflakes and cobwebs.

Today was for living, in song. And pink cheeks. And laughter.

Today was for today, unrobbed by what comes tomorrow.

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