Now that summer is behind me, and keeping up with the music/dancing scene has slowed way down, I decided to get myself tuned up for the holidays. That involved a colonoscopy, a dental appointment, eye doctor, skin doctor, new glasses and a haircut.
The colonoscopy was first, a three-day event because two years ago, I didn’t get all the way cleaned out. This time I drank liquids for two days, plus the gaggy stuff, and got a better report, but my colon was not as clean as a whistle.
My doctor popped his head into my recovery area afterward.
“You have a dirty colon,” he said, “but with air and water, we were able to get to the end this time.”
“I did a two-day clean-out!” I said.
“I know, your colon is just slow. Make an appointment if you want to talk about it.”
Then he was gone.
I missed a dance event that evening because you can’t drive for 24 hours after they give you the goofy gas.
Three days later I was in the dentist chair, getting four little fillings where my gums have receded, lots of Novocain, lots of water coming at me. It felt like water boarding, if I had a clue as to what that felt like. All I know is that I was glad when it was over.
The next day was a haircut and color, the easiest of all appointments. Then came the eye appointment. I squinted in sun glasses on my way home. It was too sunny to take the freeway, so I drove down the tree-lined boulevard that used to be the highway before the freeway went in. By the time I got home, I could almost see without squinting.
I called Thursday afternoon to schedule my six-month mole check at the skin doctor since they found melanoma in 2020. I got a next-day appointment, so rare. It was with an unfamiliar physician’s assistant, not the regular one I’ve seen for years. I took it anyway.
Miss Goh said I looked good and offered to take off the ugly brown stuff on my back, which is cosmetic, not medical. She told me she could freeze off ten of them for $160.00. I thought of the backless dresses I never want to wear now because of those ugly brown age-spot-growth-thingies, so I said yes. Then she found a suspicious mole under one of them that she wanted to biopsy for cancer.
“You’re lucky you said yes,” she told me, “or I wouldn’t have found this. I did more than ten of them, just to be sure.”
I got a bargain for my $160.00.
The colonoscopy doctor’s nurse, Adam, had asked me about any new cancers the week before. When I mentioned melanoma in 2020, he commented on Bob Marley’s toe and how he died of melanoma. Then I got the dermatology letter in the mail on Thursday, telling me it was time to come in. I was heading out after I unlocked the mailbox, but I sat in my car and waited on hold until I could make that appointment.
It’s funny how the universe lines up sometimes to get your attention. If I hadn’t had the convo about Bob Marley and then gotten that letter a week later, I might not have gone to the skin doctor as quickly, where a new physician’s assistant offered me a chance to get those brown growths off my back . . .
How many times had the other physician’s assistant looked at my back and given it an all clear?
Sometimes you have to believe in things happening for a reason. Our random lives aren’t always as random as they seem.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 