I spend another afternoon in a waiting room. I read, listen to the desk staff chat. One of them starts humming-singing a blues (gospel?) tune in a low, but perfectly pitched voice, another joins her. Harmony, until they laugh at themselves because it's such an old song.
Finally I'm back in an exam room and the doctor comes in.
"So, how are you? Let's see those films," he says.
We look at the MRI of my neck, the film clipped to a light box, and look at my spine, my disks, my spinal cord. And a slender whisper of white therein.
"Ah, see. Here, this is what I thought." The doctor traces the thin dash of white with his index finger. "This is fluid, that shouldn't be there." He tells me about how the consequent disruption to the nerves in the shoulder can lead to the destruction of the joint. "You need to see a neurosurgeon."
He dives for the door and I contemplate the film while arrangements are made.
170 words | January 6, 2005 09:05 PM | Miss Trauma