No Pants Goodbye Number Two & Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment - Day Seventeen
**This post was transferred from the now defunct "The Long Ease" blog.**
Well, I survived yesterday's goodbye and managed not to cry all over Dr. Kebria like I did on Dr. Avellone... As Ryan and I were walking down the hall on our way in, I heard my nurse, Alex, say in a sad voice, "Phoeeeebeeee..." to which I yelled back, "Don't even look at me!" I knew if I saw Alex's sad face, too, I'd cry. It was a MIRACLE that I held it together when my Nurse Practitioner, Erin, came out to the waiting room to hug me - I am ALWAYS crying to Erin on the phone every time something new is wrong with me. I love my nurses as much as I love my doctors. They are incredible ladies.
After they got my vitals, we were led to "The Room". It was serendipitous, somehow. The first time I ever saw Dr. Kebria was in that room, back in November of 2011. It's the room where we met, where he did my biopsy, where Dr. Avellone told me Dr. Kebria was leaving, where I hugged Dr. Avellone goodbye (with no pants on) when he told me HE was leaving, and then yesterday, where I hugged Dr. Kebria goodbye... again with no pants on. All in this same room. Always with no pants on. And it's not like I never saw either of those docs in one of the other many rooms at Moll Cancer Center. I did. In the one with the dent in the ceiling and the one with the weird bad lighting and, and, and... But I got to end my time under Dr. Kebria's care right where it began. Weird.
For as sad as I was, it was the perfect experience. You know. Insofar as getting a pap smear can be a perfect experience. After the no-pants hug, he explained why he was leaving and assured me that I would continue to receive great care from the other excellent doctors at the Clinic. Then I got my exam, he said everything still looks ok, Erin told me she'd mail me the standard pap results letter, and I gave Dr. Kebria my card. I probably wrote too much in it, but it's hard to keep "Thanks for saving my life - I'll miss you" low on the word count when you are as much of a flowery wordsmith as I am. He read it there anyhow, despite the length of my uber-emotional babble, and then HE thanked ME... graciously and sincerely thanked me. The man who is the reason I am alive right now. He thanked me. Amazing.
On the way out, I had to make my next appointment with a new doctor. It felt weird. In the stairwell on the way out, I was about to cry when Ryan said, once again, that Dr. Kebria was there when I needed him to be there and now he's going to where he needs to be next. It was so simple and so true. I might have only shed a few tears before I was able to move on to being happy for him and for the people he will be able to help where he ends up.
But I'm still gonna miss him.
Well, I survived yesterday's goodbye and managed not to cry all over Dr. Kebria like I did on Dr. Avellone... As Ryan and I were walking down the hall on our way in, I heard my nurse, Alex, say in a sad voice, "Phoeeeebeeee..." to which I yelled back, "Don't even look at me!" I knew if I saw Alex's sad face, too, I'd cry. It was a MIRACLE that I held it together when my Nurse Practitioner, Erin, came out to the waiting room to hug me - I am ALWAYS crying to Erin on the phone every time something new is wrong with me. I love my nurses as much as I love my doctors. They are incredible ladies.
After they got my vitals, we were led to "The Room". It was serendipitous, somehow. The first time I ever saw Dr. Kebria was in that room, back in November of 2011. It's the room where we met, where he did my biopsy, where Dr. Avellone told me Dr. Kebria was leaving, where I hugged Dr. Avellone goodbye (with no pants on) when he told me HE was leaving, and then yesterday, where I hugged Dr. Kebria goodbye... again with no pants on. All in this same room. Always with no pants on. And it's not like I never saw either of those docs in one of the other many rooms at Moll Cancer Center. I did. In the one with the dent in the ceiling and the one with the weird bad lighting and, and, and... But I got to end my time under Dr. Kebria's care right where it began. Weird.
For as sad as I was, it was the perfect experience. You know. Insofar as getting a pap smear can be a perfect experience. After the no-pants hug, he explained why he was leaving and assured me that I would continue to receive great care from the other excellent doctors at the Clinic. Then I got my exam, he said everything still looks ok, Erin told me she'd mail me the standard pap results letter, and I gave Dr. Kebria my card. I probably wrote too much in it, but it's hard to keep "Thanks for saving my life - I'll miss you" low on the word count when you are as much of a flowery wordsmith as I am. He read it there anyhow, despite the length of my uber-emotional babble, and then HE thanked ME... graciously and sincerely thanked me. The man who is the reason I am alive right now. He thanked me. Amazing.
On the way out, I had to make my next appointment with a new doctor. It felt weird. In the stairwell on the way out, I was about to cry when Ryan said, once again, that Dr. Kebria was there when I needed him to be there and now he's going to where he needs to be next. It was so simple and so true. I might have only shed a few tears before I was able to move on to being happy for him and for the people he will be able to help where he ends up.
But I'm still gonna miss him.
On to today...
Treatment Day: 17
I wasn't feeling super hot this morning, so I managed to snooze a little through something called "Blog Cabin" on HGTV. I was awake, however, through a marathon of "Flea Market Flip" wherein two teams of people with very little taste buy things at a flea market, "upcycle" them in 24 hours, and then go back to the flea market to try to sell them for a profit - and whoever makes the most on their tacky dresser-turned-wine-bar or headboard-turned-bench or doily-turned-lamp or whatever... wins. It was all quite terrible, and some of the buyers were CLEARLY fake. I was unimpressed.
Now that you have your HGTV a.m. schedule update, I suppose you want one on ME as well. Not a lot to report, I'm afraid. I am still feeling like I am starting to feel better, but I'm so nervous about pushing myself physically at ALL, that I am beginning to feel sort of fat and bleh. I need to get back to being at least a LITTLE active, I just can't figure out what to do (or when to do it, since the HBOT makes work go later, which then means I have no free time in which to BE active). So I dunno what to do about that. But I'll figure it out. I feel like, when the time is right to get active again, I will know and it will happen naturally.
And that would be all, except that there is a wonderful bookend to this post. My aforementioned awesome nurse, Alex, has been my pal on Facebook since early in the whole cancer thing. This afternoon, she shared the link to my post from yesterday about Dr. Kebria leaving. And then... THIS happened:
Sometimes a goodbye doesn't have to be "goodbye forever."
Because internet.
Love love love,
Phoebe Marie
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