A day that will live in infamy, as they say. A day Bob came in to my office after months of back pain and weeks of leg numbness to say the numbness has spread to his abdomen. WTAF? An acronym which is now part of our daily vernacular. “Wtaf. Let’s go to the ER.” So to the ER we went, because that’s where you go for a pinched nerve or neuropathy or other things you think are bad but turn out to be nothing.
The ER was packed. On a Monday at noon. People moaning, coughing kids bopping around, a maskless, twenty-something girl dry-heaving in the corner. The waiting room was too crowded for companions, they said, so I waited in the car while Bob waited inside. “Text me when they call your name and I’ll run in.” I sat in the car. Listened to a podcast. Drove to Target to pee. Grabbed Chick-fil-a. Tried to eat. Got a text. “They took me back, I’m in room 7.” I run inside but security stops me. “Did they say you could go back?” Uh. “Yes?” He lets me go back.
After more and more waiting and a blood test, a young doc in rainbow crocs comes in and asks a series of questions. “Has anyone mentioned the words Multiple Myeloma” to you before?” No. Yes. If you Google back pain and numbness that’s one of the nebulous, definitely-couldn’t-happen-to-us options that comes up so you slide by it and hope for MS. He ordered an MRI and chest X-ray and moved us to a private room in the ER. To sit there. Privately. Dreading test results and texting the girls that Papa’s been in the ER all day and we’re just waiting for results and it’s probably fine and we’ll let you know. Dr Rainbow Crocs comes after midnight and closes the sliding door behind him and says the blood tests and MRI confirm a lesion on Bob’s spine and he’ll need to see a neurosurgeon at a specialty hospital across town. A neurosurgeon? A lesion?WTAF?
They took him there by ambulance. I said I’d gather some things for him and meet him there in the morning. I texted the girls back and broke the news. I sobbed in the car. I sobbed at home. I gathered some things. WTAF.
