You Would Think....Chapter 35

I left work yesterday at 3PM to meet Don at the doctors office. Traffic was light and with much time to spare I decided to make a quick stop to one of my favorite little shops. It is an old hole-in-the-wall pet store that sells among other things, beautiful exotic birds. I once purchased a Canary from the gentleman who ran this store and ever since I lost him, I have wanted another. He did have a chipper little boy canary but the $120.00 price tag steered me away from buying him. Not sure how to explain this, but I knew going there would calm me. It did.

After wandering through and enjoying all the birds, I left and still arrived at the office before Don. I sat in the atrium waiting for him. Sitting next to an older lady..my guess was she had to have been in her 70's, I struck up a conversation with her. It is a funny thing, how much I enjoy people. In the few short minutes we spoke, we shared our passions, family stories and when Don arrived and gave me a kiss on the cheek, she grinned and said, "He's a good one." I winked and nodded in agreement and we walked into the waiting room.

The office was close to full and it was almost an hour before we were called into the examining room. Moments later our doctor followed. As always, he greeted us with a smile and a hand shake. These appointments, to me, are like reading a suspense novel. You start with small clues and have to wait until the end to get the real questions answered!

"Did you go and see the dermatologist that I recommended?" He asked turning towards Don.
"No. Believe it or not, the rash is going away on its own." Don responded.
"Let me see." he said as he stood up from his chair.

Don stood up and started pulling his shirt out of his pants to show him. He turned each direction and pointed out the worst area which now only showed faint markings where the skin used to be completely raw.

"Wow! This is great. What did you use?" The doctor inquired.
"Just Vaseline Lotion."

Going back to the file, the doctor pulled the first paper out to check his counts.
"You seem to be stabilizing. Your white blood cell count is staying around 2600 and your platelet count is 51,000 this week. I am glad it is not going down anymore, but you still need to continue on with the weekly CBC's since both of those counts could change. We need to keep a close eye on all of this." He hesitated as he thumbed through more papers. Looking up he asked, "Did you get your viral load test done?"

"Yes." Don responded. "Three weeks ago and they lost it so I had to go back and have it drawn again 2 days later."

In a more hasty manner, our doctor paged through paper after paper in his file.

"It is not here! The Viral Load test is not in here! That lab drives me crazy!" he said as he opened the door. He looked at his watch and continued, "I'll bet no one is even there."

It was 5:45PM and I realized that again we were not going to get the answer to our question...