Breathe in. Breathe out. Now hold!

Up at 4:30, showered and out the door at 5:20, where wet hair meets sub-freezing temperatures for a chilling wake-up call. Driving down the highway on autopilot impaired by a lack of breakfast to arrive at the hospital by 6 a.m.  for a CT scan.

Yes, it's time to celebrate an important anniversary: three years since my final chemotherapy treatment. Once again I face a barrage of tests to determine whether those nasty cancer cells are gone for good or merely regrouping to stage an all-star comeback tour. The assault started last Friday morning with blood tests that left behind an ugly bruise on my right forearm; this morning's work led to a matching bruise on the left forearm and a bonus bruise on the back of my right hand. Tag-team lab techs put out an All Points Bulletin for usable blood vessels, but my veins saw them coming and fled for the hills. Hence the two pokes (and two bruises) for one measly IV injection of contrast dye.

But that was later--hours and hours later. I arrived at the hospital just before 6 and spend two hours mostly sitting in a waiting room where two televisions are mounted on the wall at such an angle that it's impossible to escape the onslaught of morning drivel. Here's a tip for the hospital designers of America: if you're going to make me sit for two hours pouring barium "smoothies" into a stomach that hasn't seen solid food or caffeine since yesterday's lunch, could you please let me suffer in peace? Those glue-like delights go down much better when I'm not being bombarded by inescapable early-morning infomercials.

And here's another tip: your robo-voices need to improve their bedside manner.   I'm lying there with a needle in my arm, dye that feels like industrial acid coursing through my veins, both arms uncomfortably clasped overhead, and this big chunk of machine looming imperiously overhead, but the robo-voice doesn't make any attempt to ease my discomfort. "Breathe in, breathe out, and hold your breath," it demands, and then, after a great deal of clicking and whirring, it issues its final command: "Breathe!" 

Would it hurt so much to say "Please" once in a while? Or how about, "This'll just take a minute so why don't you hold your breath for me, honey, if it's not too much trouble?"

Now here I am in my office five hours after I first got up, with classes to teach and papers to grade and Thanksgiving to prepare, but all I want to do is eat and sleep, in that order. I'm trying to drive the taste of those barium smoothies out of my system and the memory of those inane infomercials out of my mind, but I'll have to wait a full week to get the results of all these tests. Meanwhile, I'll follow the robo-voice's commands: Breathe in, breathe out, and hold!