Waiting Around

There's an awful lot of waiting around. As everyone in a similar position will tell you, the waiting is the worst.  I'm feeling angry that I waited around for 6 months after first seeing my GP before I could get anyone to take me seriously. This is causing me some angst at the moment and I'm fighting the urge to go marching into the surgery to tell her exactly what I think of her. I won't of course, it just keeps me going thinking that I might!! If I had been sent to see a consultant immediately, would I still be in the same boat? I'll never know. 

Waiting for results of scans is equally frustrating. It seems to take forever to hear anything and then when you do and there is some urgency about it, you wish you'd never heard anything in the first place.  My head is a mess waiting to hear because it gives me time to imagine what is going on inside my body.  Is it spreading every day? Is it contained, has it actually already been removed? It makes me wonder about my own mortality and just how long I have to live. Waiting for the postman for appointments on a daily basis becomes part of the daily routine. When nothing arrives, you start to think the letter has been lost in the post or delivered to someone else by mistake. It's amazing the scenario's it's possible to make up in your head in one day! 

Then there is the waiting around at the hospital to see the consultant.  You look around the waiting room wondering just how many of those sat there have been called in the same as you have. They all look happy enough and laughing with their partners or friends.  It must just be me with bad news then. 

The consultant smiles, shakes my hand and tells me it's nice to see me again. I wonder what makes me sit there while the bad news starts to sink in and manage somehow to keep nodding and looking composed. It's not the news I want of course but after 10 months it is at least news of some sort. 

Now I wait again. I've chased up the MRI appointment. I left it a week and when I hadn't heard anything I rang the hospital.  The delay is because I couldn't go through with it last time. It is something to do with me having to go through the machine at a different angle. Why I wonder? I was told to try to go through on my belly.  How can this delay the scan? No one but me seems in any hurry to find the full facts out. It's frustrating to say the least. 

So I wait around again.....