NOT-SO-OK CORRAL – TODAY’S CLINIC – Part 1

Some 12 years ago, I was in a hospital ward of mostly older and old women, lying in bed, totally trapped by the Crohn’s diagnosis of the doctors for the past 20 years, I’d vomit and ride the porcelaine pony, sick as a seagoing varmint. particularly spring and fall though generally all the time in between, just a little less so… (No, wait, hold on – this isn’t going to be another of those testimonals about finding a cure with vinegar and honey – but it IS surprising). Yes, I surely wanted relief from the cycle of doctors-pain-hospital and steroids without me having any say.

Outside in the hall I could hear the residents coming in a cluster, listening to the head gastro as he talked about all us, ‘bed blockers,’ women with nothing much to do but be sick, women who wanted a doctor’s attention so they elevated their symptoms, silly women who put on makeup before each visit the doctor would make to the ward. Hospital are such LONELY places.
I just wanted out (though pain free) with some sort of guarantee about not returning. But here he was saying we women didn’t have anything outside the walls of the hospital, glossing over my three kids, my bookselling business, the novels I was in the midst of writing, my excursions into city politics, the cats, my dogs, my garden, the pool – there weren’t enough hours in the day!
When they came in, trying to keep straight faces, talking in that special voice idiots reserve for older women (and I was Lots younger then), I let them know I’d heard every word and written it down and I was sick to death of the lot of them. I could read the looks they were exchanging (”some of them will be cross and crabby, the old fakes”).
Released a couple days after I went straight to my family doctor, reported the whole hopeless, helpless episode – and he, Nicolas Christoveanu said – ‘Okay, I’ll take over your care for awhile,’ which was the single most hopeful statement I’d heard – maybe ever.

Of course I went immediately to the net and began to research all the new things that popped up daily about Crohns. To make a long story short, I was CELIAC! Hooray! Hooray! Which mean I HAD SOME CONTROL over what was happening to me. Talk about your good news! Whether in fact I even ever HAD Crohns was debatable. Or maybe Crohn’s isn’t even a disease. Maybe it’s Celiac all along and the Crohn’s merely doctors having made a specialty of the disease, lots of heavy research grants and nobody willing to back down and concede.

Oh, it took about a year before anyone believed me. I wouldn’t even go back to be tested since obviously the pain was gone, truly forever, as I write this.
EXCEPT – today I have a clinic appointment, more or less routine, but all these years later, it is again with that old woman-baiting-doctor and his opinion of older women as fakers. Uninteresting, less than human pretenders. Using Dr appointments as a sort of a hobby. Some may. But that doesn’t mean everybody for pete sakes!
It was too late to change by the time they told me yesterday. I envision it as sort of OK Corral only without visible weapons.

I’m going in with a plan, wearing my best hat, planning to leave all my clothes on and converse as equal… Stay tuned.