It's tiresome

all the tests and the talking. I was up at 8:00 this morning shadowing my eyes as Candace got ready for work. I knew staying up late to watch Dennis Rodman win the Celebrity Poker Tournament wasn't going to help me out this morning. It's about an hour commute from the Upper East Side to Hoboken, a quick hour considering I've done it so many times. Don't you find it funny that we can view an hour as fast or slow all the while the clock stares at us with the same consistency every time. Like Gamehedge, it's a state of mind. I had Lance Armstrong's book Every Second Counts to keep me company thanks to Jimmy's recommendation. It was helpful because I was on my way to meet Dr. Damle who is my oncologist in Hoboken.

Dr. Damle is the fifth doctor I've seen about my cancer. While each doctor has echoed the same sentiments about treatment and outcome, Dr. Damle is the first to break down the details of exactly what and how everything will happen. She's been an oncologist studying Hodgkin's for 25 years, back before CT Scans were even available. I found it comforting. It's kind of like hiring a mechanic who knew how to fix your car before all the fancy machines could read what was wrong with it. After all, my body is a machine.

She spoke and I asked questions and for over an hour my brain was digesting more information than it had during one semester of Authors of the Dark Ages (albeit a fun class filled with Poe and the like). Actually, talking about it isn't tiresome. It's not like I breathe the words "chemo" and feel like falling asleep. But it's like after trying to cram for a test the afternoon before it's given - you just want to put your head on the desk and not think about anything for a while.

From the doctors office I headed to the hospital for more testing. I remember when I was at Saint Barnabus with Jimmy and Jennie thinking to myself 'I hope I never have to spend this much time in a hospital again.' I was there so often I started to get comfortable which frightened me. Now Saint Mary's is starting to feel all too familiar. The rotating door leads me to the security guard waiting to give me my pass and I almost feel like saying, "You know the drill." What it does is it builds tolerance.

I'll never be able to stare a needle in the face and watch it penetrate my skin but I can turn my head and easily bite my lip through the pinch until the doctor tells me to unclench my fist. I can breathe in and out of a machine for 40 minutes with a rubber clip around my nose and laugh while I'm doing it, making a game out of it as I read the screen and watch the lines go up and down with each inhale and exhale. I can lay on the tissue paper covered seat-bed and stay still for 30 minutes as a 3 foot in circumference machine hovers 4 inches from my body monitoring my heart movements. My only worry at that point was that I'd fall asleep and wake up with a knee jerk reaction and bang myself into the machine. Funny little thoughts can creep into your mind while you're laying there though. I started wondering how someone who was extremely closterphobic would be able to sit through a test like that without completely freaking out. I also figured that I could probably slide myself up and out if I needed to. Not because I wanted to or was frightened I might have to. No, just because I was laying there with nothing else to think about so why think about an escape route.

I walked into my apartment at 2:45 this afternoon with a bagel in my stomach I grabbed on the walk over to the hospital. I sit typing with a band aid in the fold of each arm where the needles attacked me. My right wrist holds the hospital bracelet which reads

Cohen, Thomas
Medical Record # 43-19-89

I'm a patient. It's something I'm trying to condition myself to get used to. Sometimes that's the toughest part. Maybe I'll hit the lottery one day with those numbers - that would be nice.