Twenty minutes after Professor Oncology nixes chemo therapy, five minutes after Dr. Alpha, the radiation oncologist, calls to tell me that I need a re-excision to get clear margins (you are supposed to have 2 mm) I am sitting in my friend’s garden sipping tea from her bone china cup. I am “in the moment” trying not to mull over all the “what ifs.”   The insufficient margin frustration is behind me. Well,  almost.  My new bosom buddy, the radiation oncologist, took charge of the incomprehensible pathology report. He even called a day earlier than promised to let me know that I , indeed, need a second surgery!

Suddenly, my cell phone buzzes. A Magnolia Cancer Center number.

The way Dr. Guru, my surgeon, puts it to me, one might think that he himself had called  my radiation oncologist, to tell him to hold off radiation,  not the other way around.

“I am still not convinced you really need this,” Dr. Guru says. “But maybe it is not such a bad idea, after all.” Then in what seems like a vague apology he adds:  “I know you are very busy and all and this will be a bit of an inconvenience for you, but we might as well go ahead and put it behind us. “

“Might as well. But when?”

“Next week.” Dr. Guru does not hesitate. “We will schedule this for next week. Joy will call you to arrange the details.”

I feel stupid for being so happy. How much happier could I not have been  had  I been wrong about the re-excision, and able to start radiation right away? Is it not childish to be happy about being vindicated? After all, I am the one who will be the most inconvenienced, just like Dr. Guru admitted. Also, I feel mildly irritated that Dr. Alpha has to tell me not to hurt Dr. Guru’s feelings by “not rubbing his nose in it.” What other profession is filled with egos so fragile that they need to be perpetually wrapped in velvet and praise? A master surgeon is never to be reminded of a mistake, however slight or insignificant.

The sign “Magnolia Cancer Center” does not look as surreal as it has during my previous visits. After all, I do have breast cancer and this center is for me. Although I do not yet have the hollow eyes, the waxy complexion, the bloated body, or the shuffling gate of so many of the other cancer patients I see here. I suppose it is because I have yet to start my treatments.

A large black woman with a gap between her teeth greets me. Her look is that of kindness and concern, but not pity. I must have “new patient” written all over me. Eventually, I ,too, will be ground down by all the chemicals and look like the others: a shadow of former self.

The oncology department’s reception is as spacious as a hotel lobby, and lit by large windows. Someone has obviously dumped a serious amount of capital into this interior. (Although not enough money to allow the purchase of scanners to allow the doctors to email reports to patients.) Yet, the setting is remarkably different from Dr. Weary’s crowded, and a bit shabby, office.

The first person to check me is not Professor Oncology. It is a short, slightly round faced man in a white coat. I assume he is a student at first. Then I notice his  name tag.  He is already a doctor,  a  fellow in oncology, he explains. He seems kind, serious, and gentle. He weighs me in fully dressed and I wish I had kicked off my shoes to reduce my chart by a pound.

Professor Oncology looks Indian and seems too young to be a full Professor and Cancer specialist . Had I met her in a hospital corridor I would have taken her, too,  for a  medical student. Her black straight hair hangs down below her shoulders as does her drab navy skirt which goes inches below her knees and her white coat.  Her face is completely devoid of makeup. Her hands have a pianist’s sinewy, long fingers. Carefully, she feels about my neck, looking for signs of swollen nodes. She feels my breasts, and my armpits. She asks for permission for Dr. Fellow to examine me also.

Dr. Fellow stops with both hands around my neck and looks over at the Professor. He must think that he found something. I tense up, but she shakes her head. I immediately relax as does he.

The professor does not print out an adjuvant online graph like both Dr. Guru and Dr. Weary did. Instead, she  scribbles a few things on the back of a piece of paper. She tells me what I already know: stage 1, node negative, ER/PR + strongly so, HER/2 neg. grade 1 tumor. Like Dr. Weary, she is a bit baffled by my relatively high oncodx score.  It is 23. But she is still convinced that chemo would only improve my odds by 2%.  The professor, more than any of the others, stress the toxicity of chemo therapy: Leukemia, heart problems, bone marrow loss, risk for other infections.

Unlike, Dr. Weary, she does not agonize even a bit about skipping chemo. To my immense relief, she seems to have no doubts. She does not wring her hands, does not stand up only to abruptly sit down.

She draws up a five-year plan for hormone therapy: five years on Tamoxifen.  Or, she suggest,  we can do 21/2 years  and then switch to Arimidex, an aromatase inhibitor. I look aghast. “Oh well, Tamoxifen then,”  she shrugs. She does not ask what I have against Arimidex. She gives me an appointment for two months later when radiation will, supposedly, be over. She does not explain why I can not be on hormone blockers while on radiation. She does not bring up insufficient margins. I do not tell her about Dr. Alpha other than to mention that I will have radiation at a hospital closer to home.

Dr. Alpha, my new radiation oncologist, flips back and forth  in my pathology report. He seems annoyed. Not with me, but with the report. He pushes the reading glasses back on top of his head. “I don’t understand this,” he says. His tone bristles, but he looks kindly at me as he stabs his finger at at the bone of contention, my pathology report and the words “all other margins free of carcinoma.”

I am a bit embarrassed because in the margin I have scribbled: WTF.

“Oh no!” I hurry to explain everything, not  to defend Dr. Guru but  to sooth Dr. Alpha. I don’t want him to get more agitated and annoyed with Dr. Guru. I fish the Vanderbilt report out of my purse and show him  exhibit number one: Vanderbilt confirmed the first pathology report from my lumpectomy.

“Dr. Guru explained everything in his emails.” I tell Dr. Alpha. “I can send you copies. ”

Dr. Alpha does not seem convinced.

“Well, something is wrong.”

He starts to explain why my pathology report  is wrong, then abruptly stops himself.  He realizes that I can not process the meaning of his words so he draws a picture. “Here is the lateral margin,” he begins and goes on to explained how there has to be one. Then he goes back to the report, flips back and forth before he, frustrated, tosses the pages back on the table. Obviously, the answer he wants is not there.

“Either your pathology report is wrong or your surgeon is wrong,” he says firmly. Although he seems irritated with the report, a bit angry even, Dr. Alpha manages not to be the least bit unpleasant. “This is not right and I can not treat you like this. I read these reports all day long.  All day long. That is what I do for a living and I have seen everything.”

I am tempted to ask him about “everything,” but I guess that it would take an eternity and be way over my head anyway. Darn I wish I had paid more attention to science and not blown it off as “nerdy.”

“Forget Vanderbilt! They just confirm tissue cells. They don’t confirm margins,” he says and hands back the Vanderbilt result.

“Either the pathologist marked the slides wrong or the surgeon is wrong and has to redo it and give you a re-excision.” says Dr. Alpha.

“But that will take for ever? He is busy.”

“Not at all. He owes you. He will just have to get up a bit earlier in the morning. I am here till seven or eight at night. My colleague, Dr. E’s car never leaves here before 7.30 PM either.”

I mildly defend Dr. Guru. “I am sure he works that late too. In fact, some of his emails are sent late at night.”

“I will put in a call to him right now.”

“Good luck!”

“Let’s start with your pathologist then. Do you have her number?”

I scroll through my Blackberry while Dr. Alpha in a typical Type A fashion watches over my shoulder. “No, not that number, that’s not it. Oh, so you don’t have it,” he says while I am still scrolling. “Well, I will take care of it and I will call you by Friday. This will be cleared up by then, one way or the other. Either you have to have another surgery next week or we can start your radiation.”

I leave Dr. Weary to meander through the bowels of the hospital until I end up in its basement.  “Radiation” reads one arrow pointing down yet another hallway.  Around that corner another door:  “Environmental Services.”

Toxic waste? Then I realize it is only a euphemism for the janitor’s office. Around the next corner from the janitor’s closet a sign reads: “Radiation Oncology.”

The ceiling is low, the tiny waiting room has a few wooden arm chairs, all empty, and a floor to ceiling aquarium with what looks to be salt water fish. The receptionist is heavy set, slow, none too friendly. She waddles off to make a copy of my pathology report before she sends me next door.

Inside the door, a figure, slightly bent forward, comes steaming towards me in the dark hallway,  walking with a bit of a limp. Hip injury? Knee? Still, Dr. Alpha looks fit and tall, dressed in a short sleeved silk shirt, well fitting slacks and a cool belt. Hugo Boss?

At first glance, I expect him to be “a man’s man” and a bit full of himself, someone who talks “at” women, or above their heads.

Wrong.

Dr. Alpha pulls up a chair, right next to mine, by the large conference table. He  is informal and attentive,  seems sincere as he immediately engages me. He asks how I discovered my cancer. We chat about my oncodx test result? What about my visit with Dr. Weary? Like Dr. Guru and Dr. Weary, Dr. Alpha carefully probes my neck. I dare barely breath as his large hands searches for a swelling or a node perhaps missed by the others.  But without as much as a glance at me, he sits back down and again checks the “shared decision chart” that I just received from the oncologist.

“I don’t want chemo,” I tell Dr. Alpha.

“There is this study from your neck of the woods,” he says. “It shows chemo at your stage to be of very little benefit.”

“From the Karolinska Institute?”

He nods.

Like with Dr.Weary, I have no sense that Dr. Alpha’s “patient time management clock” is ticking, even though I have been dropped into his schedule without much warning.

“Do you happen to have your pathology report with you?” he asks.

Although his receptionist just copied it for him, I fish out my own copy from my purse which by now is an ambulatory file cabinet. Dr. Alpha adjusts his reading glasses. In one nano-second, he is hung up on the “less than 1 mm margin all other sides free of carcinoma” issue,  the one issue that bothered me for weeks, the one issue  I just had given up on.

Dr. Weary piles on the good news about his chemo regimen:

“You will not suffer for five months straight. Only for six week-ends. You may have your treatments on Fridays so you can recover over the week-end and be at work by Monday. Maybe by Tuesday.”

“Great.”

“We give you medication to control nausea. You will not feel so hot, but it is bearable. You will be able to function. “

One thing he does not mention is this statistic: a large percentage of women who receive chemo loose their memory, and not insignificant: many can never again experience orgasm. It seems to me that this would be as important to mention as the hair loss, more important since hair grows back. But Dr. Weary does not bring these subjects up. Perhaps he thinks:. Death is the ultimate loss of both joy and memory.

While I am processing the thought of having chemo and  I try not to fall apart before his eyes,  Dr. Weary brings up a new National Study.

“Thousands of women are in it,”  he says as if there were safety in numbers. “Women with oncodx score lower than 11 get hormones only. Everyone with a score between 12 and 24 gets assigned by a computer at random to receive chemo or hormone blocking medication only. Everyone 25 or higher gets chemo. Of course, once you agree, you have to accept what the computer chooses. The decision is not yours,” he says.

My score of 23 is uncomfortably close to those who MUST have chemo. I feel faint. I try to divert his attention from chemo to hormone therapy. Which one would it be? Tamoxifen?

Dr. Weary waves his hand dismissively. No, his hormone blocker of choice is Arimidex. “Much better stuff,”he says

We talk about the study at length. He seems to have all the time in the world, no concern with the “patient time management schedule.” But I am anxiously aware of the clock on the wall behind him.

I hear myself tell Dr. Weary that I feel I ought to participate in the study for the sake of my two daughters. But I am really uncomfortable with the randomness. The Russian roulette aspect of the computer choice. I am terrified of chemo. After a long silence I ask Dr. Weary point blank:

“Would you let your wife take part in the study?”

He stares at his desk for what seems to be an eternity. Finally, he looks up.

“I’d like to think that I would be brave enough to let her do that,” he says softly.

I decide to make it easier for him:

“What about your daughter.”

“Chemo,” he says without the slightest hesitation. He shuffles the papers in my file, reads my score over and over. “I am puzzled by the high oncodx score given the profile of the tumor characteristics in the pathology report,” he tells me.

Eighty percent of my cells are well differentiated, strongly ER and PR positive, not HER/2 positive (25% of women are.) I am stage 1, excellent general health. But something in my tumor put me at intermediate risk for distant recurrence.

Distant recurrence is doctor speak for Stage IV, about which Dr. Susan Love in her breast book writes: “Take care of your affairs in the time you have left.”

“I will support you in whatever you decide,” Dr. Weary says with a sigh. He wrings his hands, stands up, only to abruptly sit down again.

“I don’t know,” he says, almost as if talking to himself more than to me. “This breast cancer thing, you just never know. It has a way of sneaking up on you, of surprising you. I suppose I have over prescribed, but it is so hard to see someone come back. It is so hard.”

Dr. Weary looks tremendously sad as he speaks. And his sadness fills not only the room, but me as well. People have told me about him, how he will come and sit and talk to patients while they are getting their chemo. I think about M. who asked him to keep her alive at stage IV as long as possible so her daughters would be older when they lost her, more able to care for themselves. I can not even begin to imagine the emotional difficulties of Dr. Weary’s job. I also imagine that without chemo, he would not have much of a practice.

“I used to give everyone chemo,” he says. “It was probably overkill, but I did not know it then. My colleague over there,” he points at the wall, towards the office next door. “He has been in this game for 30 years and he gives chemo to everyone.”

I laugh nervously and manage to make some comment about how “I will be sure to avoid him.” We agree that I will also consult the oncologist at the University Medical Clinic.  He does not seem the least offended that I like to have a second opinion. “She is the chemo lady,” he tells me, then, noticing my startled expression, he corrects himself: “No, she is the hormone lady. Well, I don’t know. You will find out.”

“Get a second opinion, then, decide. Some of my patients have gone to her.”  Dr. Weary  seems quite insouciant.

Just as I am about to leave, he asks if I wanted to meet with a radiation oncologist. “Might as well,” he says. “Either you will start radiation right away or in January when chemo is over, so you consult with him now. I will check if he is free.” Dr. Weary picks up his phone and tells the person on the other line that he will be sending over this “very nice lady.”

Dr. Weary’s office is crowded and a bit shabby. His nurse weighs me, takes my blood pressure and draws several vials of blood. The work area is cramped and cluttered. Staff bumps into each other as they reach for needles, gauze, and other paraphernalia. I walk towards my meeting with Dr. Weary himself  through a narrow hallway which is lined with a long row of vinyl chairs. Each is equipped with a rod from which the dreaded chemo bottle will hang (or does chemo come in bags?) I shudder.

Dr. Weary runs late, but quickly pulls his chair up to the desk. He is fiftyish, speaks with a slight Southern drawl. He has kind brown eyes, and smiles easily, but looks a bit tired.

In front of him, on the desk, is a file and a brochure entitled “Shared Decision Making Chart.”  I notice that it has the same adjuvant statistical grahps as  Dr. Guru’s, except these bars are in full color. Dr. Weary’s assessment is different too:  My improved survival with chemo is not one in a hundred, but four in a hundred. I feel my hands start to tremble and get clammy.

“How can that be?” I ask. (I should be delighted that it is four in a hundred not forty, but I am focused on disaster. I am so petrified of the chemo that I have also completely lost sight of its purpose.)

“Well, Guru based his on first generation chemo, ” he says. Now we have a much more effective therapy. We give six rounds, not four, and we give it every three weeks.

“We give cytoxan/adriamyacin/5FOX in six cycles. Your beautiful hair, ” Dr. Weary looks up to glance at my head, “will be gone, of course. With Andriamycin the hair falls out after the first cycle, but it ALL comes back,” he assures me.

I want to joke that the hair is more Van Michael’s than my own, but I am too shocked at the thought of chemo, and I try hard not to get weepy.

I have been so prepared to skip the chemo poisons. But  the issue again looms before me, like some growling, nasty pit bulldog in my path.

In Dr. Weary’s waiting room, I begin to fill in endless health questions on a clumsy electronic gadget. It allows him to transfer everything directly to a computer without errors, I suppose. But the design of the gadget is decidedly more  Soviet era style  than a modern American invention.

The waiting room is empty except for a woman who I guess  to be in her early 80s. White, perfectly coiffed, hair, immaculately groomed, but with a nasal, raspy voice, the kind that grates on anyone’s nerves. She is accompanied by a middle-aged woman who could only be her daughter.

The daughter, too, is immaculate: shoulder length blond hair, sprayed into a helmet. Green mini-skirt with a small pattern. Is it a golf skirt, a tennis skirt, or just a mini skirt to reveal her shapely tanned legs and aging knees? Her purse and sandals match the green skirt. A junior league type.

The middle-age daughter helps the mother fill in  health questions. Not on the type of gadget I have, but on reams of white forms. The daughter reads out loud: questions about hemorrhoids, bowel movements, head aches, medications, surgeries, libido: high or low? The mother does not appear to be hard of hearing, but the daughter still insists on speaking in a loud clear voice that reverberates in the almost empty, quiet  space.

“When did you have your biopsy?“

The mother seems confused.

“Biopsy?”

Was she uncertain about having had a biopsy or just about the date?

“What was the name of your surgeon?”

“My doctor?” whines the mother, “it was, let me see, “Wasn’t it Doctor C?” She looks at her daughter, clearly hoping the answer is right.

“No, your surgeon!” snaps the daughter.

“Oh my surgeon. Well, let me think.”

You can almost see the neurons in the old woman’s brain crash into each other, go in spirals at the speed of molasses, as the poor thing tries to recall the name of her surgeon. The daughter finally rescues her.

“Wasn’t it Doctor X?”

“Oh yes, of course,” the old woman relaxes. Grateful, she pats her daughter’s hand.

“Of course it was. Now I remember. But I always confuse him with Dr. Y.”

The daughter does not seem like someone who works outside the home. Could she not have taken an hour or so to fill out these forms in the privacy of the mother’s home  where they would have access to her records?

No, here they are, the ice cold, dutiful daughter, so clearly annoyed and inconvenienced; and the whiny, self-absorbed mother, who comes across not so much cold as she does superficial. The old woman seems much more interested in gossip than her own health issues.

In her squeaky voice she prattles on about a cruise, about some make-up she bought at Sak’s. About some couple with problems. The daughter bristles and snaps at the mother, her feathers inexplicably ruffled by even the most innocuous statements.

I realize the old woman is hard to take. I have no problem thinking that she may not have been the warmest and most available of mothers. She seems incredibly concerned with proprieties, decorations, and shopping. And I also recognize the anger issues that I had with my own mother, and my oldest daughter with me.

It is eerie how easily, and universally, mothers tend to irritate their children. Although, my youngest seem to have fewer issues with me than my oldest does. Perhaps because we are both extroverts, eager to please, talkative, while my oldest is more of an introvert, self-contained, quiet. Or maybe I have just been harder on my oldest daughter, more inexperienced as a mother. (How easy it must be to bruise a human being’s soul even with the best of intentions. ) Yet neither of my daughters are as irritated with me as I have always been with my own mother.

But for all the issues I had with my mother: her neediness, her complaints, her woe is me, please-cheer-me-up-demands, I would not in a million years ever have humiliated her by discussing the details of her deteriorating body in front of strangers.

Also, I feel bad  how easily these two women have managed to give me an adverse chemical reaction. Just a few days earlier, I  promised myself to be a better person. More tolerant.  Kinder. Yet, here I am, my tumor removed, my prognosis rosy, and, still, I am right back where I don’t want to be: Judgmental and impatient with others, the two habits I swore off just a few days ago.

The Breast Consultants at Vanderbilt University confirm the previous findings in my pathology report. And Dr. Guru assures me that “he would not do a re-excision on his own wife.”  That does it for me. I cancel the appointment  with the second surgeon, the one set by my sister-in-law.

After all, the second surgeon has not been inside my boob. Dr Guru has.  And I find Dr. Guru’s statement that he would “not redo the surgery on his own wife”  more compelling than anything he could have told me. His wife was my anesthesiologist: attractive, funny, smart, a bit sassy. I believe that Dr. Guru has every reason to want her around.

For the first time in weeks, months really, I begin to relax. I don’t have to delay further treatments. I will have radiation for sure, but I can deal with that. No worries.

I still feel tremendously weary and anxious at the mere thought of chemo therapy though.  But Dr. Guru rolls that stone off  my heart with a few words: “Not much benefit for someone like you,”  he says, and shares with me a chart that shows only a one percent benefit of chemo therapy in my case.

-Why did you not say so right away? I ask him. You know I have been petrified.

-Well, I wanted it to be your decision, he says. Some women will opt for chemo even for a one percent benefit.

In a jiffy, life looks simple and uncomplicated.  No speed bumps ahead.  No re-excision. No chemo therapy. Now that I have dodged that scary chemo bullet, I promise myself to be a good person. I will be more patient, kinder, less judgmental. From this day on forward, I will be a new me to show the whole world my gratitude. Always.

I have an appointment, arranged by my sister-in-law, with Dr. Weary a much respected oncologist whose specialty, it seems, is to keep cancer patients alive long after others would have tossed in the towel. The day after, I have an appointment with another oncologist, at the Medical School, arranged by Dr. Guru’s office. I might as well hear two opinions, have two physicians confirm in unison that all is A-OK.

I am on cloud nine.

Monday morning, 7 AM as usual, I am back at work after my Friday lumpectomy. I feel a bit listless, like walking in chewing gum. My brain is gauzy, but I have no pain.  The week-end has been one long folk fest filled with visitors and forced relaxation.

The worst  now is not being able to wear a bra. It makes me feel bovine and clumsy. I  feel guilty for thinking this way. I should be glad I still have a breast, albeit one that is dyed green, bruised, and swollen.

The paperwork I got when I was discharged instructs me to see Dr. Guru at 1:15 pm. I leave my office right after an early lunch and head to the University Medical Center.

At Dr. Guru’s office, a nurse removes the bandages. Underneath, the bruises and the blue stain look much worse than I had imagined. But the incision on my breast is practically healed,  reduced to an angry red streak.  Only a corner of the small scar is oozing a bit.

Dr. Guru’s run-by post op takes less than ten seconds. He glances at the breast and the incision under my arm, as if  in passing, before brusquely telling his nurse to bandage me up again.

“Yes, you can exercise now, but not upper body. No swim for a week. Pathology can take ten days.“

Dr. Guru is gone.

What’s next?

The day I have worried about, fought for, and pushed for, is finally here. Last time I had surgery, 26 years ago,  two healthy full-term babies, a boy and a girl, were removed from my body. This time the surgeon will remove a specimen of malignant neoplastic tissue, surrounded, I suppose, by normal grizzle and fat. (My niece, a medical student, says the inside of a woman’s breast looks like it is filled with spaghetti-Os.)

My cancer cells have been hiding inside me for years, secretly dividing themselves, feeding and growing through angiogenesis until they reached a palpable lump, the size and shape of a hazelnut. Nobody can tell me how this excessive cell division got started. Too much consumption of hormone treated meat and dairy? DDT? Chest X-Rays? Just a DNA roulette?

Nothing to eat or drink after midnight, I am told.  No latte. No orange juice. Not even water. Also, no make up is allowed. They want to see the normal pallor of your skin and be able to tell if your lips turn blue. Normal morning routine takes an hour, including ten minutes for the New York Times. Now  I am showered, dressed, and ready to go in less than 20 minutes.

Summer traffic is sparse and traffic lights line up green, practically all the way. Accompanied by my husband, I arrive way ahead of schedule. We valet park and before I know it, I am back in the outpatient surgery waiting room where I waited an hour only two days earlier. Now, at 7 A.M., the place is filled with couples, one patient and one a “responsible party”  and designated driver. This time I don’t wait.

I am ushered into the inner sanctum almost immediately and shown to a gurney behind some drapes in one of the pre-op units. Over a loud speaker I hear a female voice: Dr. Guru, Dr. Guru, OR 4. OR 4. Holy smoke, my doctor is doing another surgical procedure before mine. How many after me? How does he manage it? How many coffee breaks does he get? None?

It feels strange to arrive  feeling perfectly healthy and normal.   I am weighed in like a prize cow, stripped of my clothes and donned the hideous gown that is supposed to be “one size fits all” but appears to fit no one. My vitals are checked and approved. Within minutes, I have a plastic ID band around my wrist, an IV in my arm, and a  warm blanket around my legs.

I feel like the perfect nursing home specimen as I take a couple of shuffling steps. I  try to  keep my gown closed in the back and the blanket from falling off.  The IV pole rattles and the tube tangles. My whole sorry appearance highlighted by unforgiving sharp ceiling lights. I sink back on my gurney.

On the other side of the curtain, a wife (I assume) and a nurse, both try to talk sense into some confused male. It is hard to tell if he was waking up from anesthesia, or if he is this confused already before his procedure. They shout at him, explain to him, cajole him. But he remains recalcitrant. “No why? No, I don’t want to,” he keeps saying. It is unclear what he doesn’t want to do.

Suddenly my husband is allowed into pre-op and shortly after that comes Dan, my friend Elise’s husband, the anesthesiologist, on his day off! He is dressed in scrubs although his colleague is the one who will put me under. He showed up just for me although he does not really know me. I am Elise’s friend. Why am I not surprised that my dear Elise has such a wonderful husband?

But I cannot socialize for long.  A nurse leads me away. I shuffle behind her, my IV pole swaying, to another waiting room. I am about to recieve the mysterious wires. Before I can ask the nurse exactly what “the wire” means, she is gone. I am alone in a tiny waiting room with three other women, and a young girl.