Time is Money

  My times are in your hand; deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors.

Psalm 31:15

            “I don’t have time for this!” is the cry of my heart. It’s not just that I have surgery next week, but all the things that have to be done prior to that event. Now I’ve been told to get an EKG. I’ve managed to escape one for a few surgeries, but apparently have crossed some threshold. So tomorrow I will drive 20 miles one way to my nearest hospital-I-trust for the pre-surg testing: EKG, blood work, and a urine sample, just in case I have a bad heart or an infection and don’t know it.

            “I’m fine! We don’t need to do this!” I want to tell them all, but having a cancer growing in me for perhaps five years before it presented symptoms (which my gynecologic oncologist thinks is the case for my ovarian cancer) shakes my confidence that I know what’s going on with my body. I know that the medical people have my best interests in mind—and that they also want to avoid lawsuits or the embarrassment of having me die on the table from some unsuspected heart condition.

            It’s the little things, always. I’ve been on the phone to get pre-registered for my CATscan related to the first cancer, for the surgery for my second cancer, and for the EKG, just this morning. A phone call takes less time than going in to the hospital or imaging center, but it breaks my concentration. As a freelance writer, I am nearly always trying to concentrate on something—this morning, I am way out of my league, trying to plan revisions for a piece on the International Space Station. Now, instead of getting back to work, I’m ranting on the page.

            It will all work out. I “lose” tomorrow morning to an EKG, but my editors aren’t calling for my arrest. I haven’t been able to walk in the woods, one of my preferred methods of maintaining my balance; I’ve not felt that I had time, and it’s been storming for days here. Walking would help.

“All shall be well,” Julian of Norwich says. I expect them to find nothing on the EKG, and nothing on the CATscan, and nothing to indicate an infection that would mean rescheduling surgery. I need to stop carping about the time and expense of all these tests and procedures and give thanks that modern medicine has kept me alive this long. I’ll get right on that, as soon as I have time.