Beware of the Am-I-right-scanner!
by Annette Schwindt
Phone calls are supposed to cheer a sick person up. Nevertheless some of them are so hilarious that you are rather exhausted afterwards. That is what happened to me the other day when I tried to recover from heavy heart rhythm problems. Quickly all the neighbours of my parents knew the poor little daughter far away in Bonn who had to rest. And so my telephone was ringing soon. One of the neighbours who wanted to encourage me with her own experiences:
"OH GOD, I heard it already..." she started right away to pity me.
"I've already had a heart catheter two times, my husband three times! And
if I go to my doctor now and say I want one more, then I'll get one!"
Was she about to order one for me now too?
"It's nothing bad", she tried to calm me. "They just cut you in the
groin and then they push a wire in there..."
"A probe", I helped her.
"Yeah, such a wire, they'll push it in there, veeeeeeery slowly."
Oh wow!
"And if there is more space, they take a bigger one and then they push it in
there, veeeeeeeeeery slowly. And then they can see what is there."
Fantastic insight indeed... but that was not all: "When they have finished
looking then, they pull the wire out again, veeeeeeeery slowly"
Yes, I've heard that!
"And then you have to lie on your back for six hours, mustn't move at all!
Then they put a sandbag on the groin, because it's bleeding like hell, you know.
Then you have to drink a lot but you mustn't go to the loo, you have to pee into
a bedpan."
Well thank you for all those details!
And... what about herself?
"Oh, I might have a bowel tumour", she said as if she was talking about
the latest cooking recipe. "I had an examination with the Am-I-right-scanner.
They push you in a tube there and then they can see everything."
Before I could ask for the results of the biopsy or even say that I was sorry to
hear that, she already continued: "But you know I'll NEVER do cheeemo!"
Oh, why is that?
"Naaah, cheeemo? No!" she declared decisively. "A colleague of mine,
she's had cheeeemo for FOUR years now and it goes on and on! Imagine, her hair is
falling out!"
Well, that is one of the side effects of chemotherapy but it may help you to survive
the cancer.
"Naaah, cheeemo, that's not for me."
Well everybody has to decide for themselves.
By the way it turned out then that she had no tumour. And all that after she had ended our phone call with the consoling words: "But if the doctor says I have to do cheeeemo, well... then I'll do it."
Get well soon!
This text by Annette Schwindt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.