Creak Show
MOSWO prescribed Motrin for my joint pain. It's helping, but it's not exactly the magic bullet for which I might have hoped.
Whenever I've been sitting (or lying down) for an extended period, standing (or getting) up becomes a full-on process. I can't straighten my knees right away, and my toes feel like they're trying to curl up into individual fetal positions. And my Achilles tendons are so taut I think I could coax music from them if I had the proper bow.
Today I had to go up to school to drop off a form and a couple of checks in order to extend my student health insurance through the fall semester. My destination was an office on the fourth floor of the Health Services building. For reasons I cannot fathom, this is one of several university buildings in which the ground floor is actually the second floor. (The J-school is the same way. I think it's so that folks with basement offices can use "first floor" as some kind of euphemism.)
The Health Services building doesn't have a public elevator, but I was not really up for climbing those two flights of stairs. I'd had my Herceptin treatment earlier in the morning and had already descended and climbed stairs in order to take the subway 100 blocks north from the cancer center to the campus. Plus it was really hot and humid out, and I was more than a little fatigued.
So I walked over to the security desk and asked the "guard" (aka 19-year-old undergrad with the least taxing summer job imaginable) where to find the elevator.
He looked at me askance and spoke in a tone laced with skepticism.
"Do you require the elevator?"
It's times like these that I am tempted to start removing articles of clothing to demonstrate that while I may not be walking with a cane or a cast or a seeing-eye dog, I am not, in fact, in peak physical condition. You'd think being bald and nearly eyebrow-free would be some kind of tip-off. Apparently it wasn't.
I'm not sure what he thought I was trying to get away with. I asked where to find the elevator, not the locked drug drawer.
I was reminded briefly of the TSA security guard who checked my ID the first time I flew after finishing treatment almost five years ago. My hair was super-short, but my driver's license still sported an old photo in which my thick waves almost reached my shoulders. The guard glanced at me and then at my license. She had been on auto-pilot, but now she stared at me, shocked. I got the sense that she didn't like my short "cut."
"What happened to your hair??"
She had practically shouted the words.
I was mortified. There were dozens of people behind me in line, and I could feel the sharp focus of their attention as their heads swiveled toward me.
I uttered a single word, slowly and loudly enough to make my point to the guard and to the spectators lined up behind me:
"Che-mo-ther-a-py."
Then I snatched the license from her hand and proceeded to the metal detectors. Looking back, I feel a pang of guilt. After all, she had committed an offense no greater than failing to think before she spoke.
Perhaps that's why I chose not to zing the petulant teenage security guard this afternoon. And why I kept my clothes—and my hat—on.
He's young and probably very healthy. Those are good things to be, for as long as one can.
Whenever I've been sitting (or lying down) for an extended period, standing (or getting) up becomes a full-on process. I can't straighten my knees right away, and my toes feel like they're trying to curl up into individual fetal positions. And my Achilles tendons are so taut I think I could coax music from them if I had the proper bow.
Today I had to go up to school to drop off a form and a couple of checks in order to extend my student health insurance through the fall semester. My destination was an office on the fourth floor of the Health Services building. For reasons I cannot fathom, this is one of several university buildings in which the ground floor is actually the second floor. (The J-school is the same way. I think it's so that folks with basement offices can use "first floor" as some kind of euphemism.)
The Health Services building doesn't have a public elevator, but I was not really up for climbing those two flights of stairs. I'd had my Herceptin treatment earlier in the morning and had already descended and climbed stairs in order to take the subway 100 blocks north from the cancer center to the campus. Plus it was really hot and humid out, and I was more than a little fatigued.
So I walked over to the security desk and asked the "guard" (aka 19-year-old undergrad with the least taxing summer job imaginable) where to find the elevator.
He looked at me askance and spoke in a tone laced with skepticism.
"Do you require the elevator?"
It's times like these that I am tempted to start removing articles of clothing to demonstrate that while I may not be walking with a cane or a cast or a seeing-eye dog, I am not, in fact, in peak physical condition. You'd think being bald and nearly eyebrow-free would be some kind of tip-off. Apparently it wasn't.
I'm not sure what he thought I was trying to get away with. I asked where to find the elevator, not the locked drug drawer.
I was reminded briefly of the TSA security guard who checked my ID the first time I flew after finishing treatment almost five years ago. My hair was super-short, but my driver's license still sported an old photo in which my thick waves almost reached my shoulders. The guard glanced at me and then at my license. She had been on auto-pilot, but now she stared at me, shocked. I got the sense that she didn't like my short "cut."
"What happened to your hair??"
She had practically shouted the words.
I was mortified. There were dozens of people behind me in line, and I could feel the sharp focus of their attention as their heads swiveled toward me.
I uttered a single word, slowly and loudly enough to make my point to the guard and to the spectators lined up behind me:
"Che-mo-ther-a-py."
Then I snatched the license from her hand and proceeded to the metal detectors. Looking back, I feel a pang of guilt. After all, she had committed an offense no greater than failing to think before she spoke.
Perhaps that's why I chose not to zing the petulant teenage security guard this afternoon. And why I kept my clothes—and my hat—on.
He's young and probably very healthy. Those are good things to be, for as long as one can.
posted by Jody Rosen Knower at 8:36 PM
1 Comments:
God bless ya', Jody. (And I mean that in whatever way you choose to interpret...) One of my clients, who survived Auschwitz, explained to a young man employed by the city during a jury duty interview that she had been imprisoned during the Holocaust. His response: "What's that?" Ah youth. xo, Abby
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