Journal: News & Comment

I'm confused

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Yesterday when I spoke to my cancer surgeon, Dr. Brown, for the first time, all indications were that we'd probably proceed with at least one operation sometime next week or very soon thereafter. Then this morning, his secretary called me to say she was setting up another flexible sigmoidoscopy (i.e. a camera probe)—my third one, not counting the brief rigid scope Dr. Brown used himself yesterday—for February 20.

WTF?

I asked her why, when I was anticipating scheduling the surgery itself a week earlier than that, rather than another test. She didn't know precisely, but expected that Dr. Brown wanted to take another look to plan for the surgery, and that his schedule is pretty full. Well, of course it is. He's a surgeon, and he's not supposed to have a lot of free time. But she could hear the annoyance in my voice, and bumped up the test a week, to February 13.

Still, I'm going to ask my GP Dr. Hassam about this when I see him tomorrow. I'm tired of tests, especially the third or fourth version of the same test, never mind the colonoscopy and CT scan—I've had consultations and discussions and tests since late November, and meanwhile this thing is still growing in me and no one has yet done anything about it directly. I want to be on the road to getting it out.

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