Hurry Up and Wait

Hur­ry up and wait.

Any­one who has ever spent any time in a hos­pi­tal, or real­ly any med­ical set­ting at all, under­stands the con­cept of hur­ry up and wait.

You wait for appoint­ments. And tests. And results. And then for the appoint­ment with a new spe­cial­ty area that occurs because of the results from the test that was ordered by the doc­tor for whom you wait­ed months for an appoint­ment in the first place.

Hur­ry, skedad­dle, rush.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

In the med­ical world, you also wait for answers.

I’m still waiting.

Ear­li­er this week I had a bilat­er­al bone mar­row biop­sy. A pro­ce­dure which involved 9 IV holes in my arms, 1 hole in my fin­ger and 2 giant holes in my hip bones. Then I had an endoscopy, which involved 3 chunks removed from my esoph­a­gus and, frankly, a pret­ty sweet anes­the­sia induced nap.

In short, I look a bit like a road full of potholes.

Pot­holes which showed absolute­ly nothing.

I feel a bit like my dis­ap­point­ment can’t be war­rant­ed. After all, I knew there was a high prob­a­bil­i­ty for neg­a­tive test results.

But war­rant­ed or not, I was still hop­ing. Not even for a diag­no­sis, but at least for a clue. Some­thing to lead me in the right direc­tion. To reopen my prover­bial case and reori­ent my compass.

Zilch.

Where’s Dr. House when you need him?

So now I’m back to wait­ing. I’ll wait the nec­es­sary off-med­i­cine 10 weeks before I have my blood drawn again to see if it will show any­thing fab­u­lous and excit­ing. And I’ll go through the grand dog and pony show of acquir­ing dry ice again for said blood extrac­tion. And then, just for a change of pace, I’ll wait.

It’s fun­ny how the moments you want to get here seem to take wait­ing to a new lev­el, and the moments you want noth­ing to do with seem to appear out of thin air.

This morn­ing I woke up and real­ized it was May 16^th. Two days past May 14^th.

Um, just how much anes­the­sia did they give her this week??

May 14^th, 2013 seemed like a day that was SO far away when it was first men­tioned to me as a dead­line. It was a dead­line that I nev­er thought I would need to know, because nev­er in my wildest dreams did I think it would apply to me.

May 14^th, 2013 is the day that I lost my posi­tion at my beloved ele­men­tary school.

When I first tran­si­tioned into long term dis­abil­i­ty, I nev­er thought I would stay on it through the dead­line. It was sup­posed to be tem­po­rary, just a time to rest and heal. I nev­er thought that I would­n’t return to my home and school fam­i­ly of 7 years. It nev­er even crossed my mind.

I nev­er thought there would be a day when some­one would ask me what I do and I would have to pause…because I’m not entire­ly sure of the answer.

I have to believe that my body is guid­ing me on a jour­ney that will ulti­mate­ly lead to new dis­cov­er­ies — both for myself and oth­ers in my field of med­ical mys­ter­ies. I have to believe that my deci­sion to go back to school and pur­sue the field of holis­tic health was my oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a change in the midst of chaos and use my expe­ri­ence to help oth­ers fol­low their own path.

As tough as these past few weeks have been, both phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly, I have to believe that this jour­ney is lead­ing me some­where, as long as I have the patience and per­se­ver­ance enough to follow.

So I’m going to hur­ry up and help my body heal the potholes.

I’m going to pack up my bags and head home to hug my hus­band, my bed and my juicer.

And then with open ears and a bat­tle-worn heart, I will wait.