Wednesday, May 9, 2018

A rare day

For the first time in at least two years a medical test didn't find anything so wrong with me that I'll need major surgery, like the two leg operations I had a year ago and the amputation of my right leg at the hip eight weeks ago.
I went to the city to meet with my surgeon. The result: Get another scan at the beginning of August. It's early May now, so I'll have two months of being relatively devil-may-care and then a month of anxiety as the date of the test nears.
women in a starbucks
Two women converse in a Philadelphia Starbucks.

Oh wait. I'm forgetting. I also have prostate cancer and the doc advised using this window to take care of that. (No, the prostate cancer I have isn't the wait and see kind that everyone seems these days to think is the only kind there is. It's the you-better-get-that-prostate-cut-out-of-you-or-nuked-before-it-spreads-and-kills-you kind.)
But compared to having an entire leg cut off, having one vile little gland removed will seem like a crutch in the park.
My doctor is a busy one because he's good and therefore in demand. My appointment was for 11:45. The receptionist said he was running an hour late. I didn't actually see him until 1:45. 
For the hour I knew he'd be late I left the building and went to a nearby Starbucks. While there, I sat near two young women. It is nice, at my age—nearly sixty—to see young people. 
Here's what I wrote while watching them:
Nine feet in front of me a fetching woman who is twenty-five is talking to her friend almost nonstop. She's wearing a black and white striped dress, sandals, and her toenail polish is ruby red. A brunette, her hair is up, sunglasses perched atop. Dark brown eyes, emphatic gestures, olive skin. Like me, she's drinking iced coffee with cream (or milk). She's talking fast, in keeping with her gestures. The conversation the two are having is covering a wide range of topics, mostly about what they and their friends are doing. Unlike when I'm out with friends my age, neither has once asked the other to repeat herself, despite the background noise and music bouncing off the hard surfaces.

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