Waiting rooms

So this weekend was amazing. Sara and I have both been wallowing in the comfort of knowing just how many people have our backs (it's awesome). But now it's back to the grind of it all. I've been sitting alone in the waiting room at the University of Michigan breast cancer clinic for the past two hours. Two hours. I can only imagine where they've got Sara waiting, but I'm sure it's equally as fun.

At least I have my iPad. You have every right to hate that guy who sits around in public on his (or her) electronic devices looking like a pretentious tool. I hate that person, too. But today it happens to be me, and I'm so glad. Because without the Internet my options are Sports Illustrated and Better Homes and Gardens. Yep, I'm rambling.

We're here today for our second opinion. We're supposed to meet with a different surgeon who will tell us what he or she thinks is the smarter of our options and what the game plan might look like. And we're supposed to meet with a new oncologist, who will hopefully not assume that they know what every question we are going to ask is before we ask it. Don't get me wrong, our current oncologist is very nice and seems to know her stuff. But this one character trait is enough to drive someone crazy when the questions are so important. And then we'll meet with who knows whomever else.

But right now we are in breast imaging. I know that our current team already sent everything over but apparently they wanted to do it all again. I'm okay with that, but I wish I could go back there with her. At least for this part where I know she is probably just sitting in some sort of small room back there alone waiting herself for 95% of the time. And she doesn't even have an iPad to keep her company.

It's kind of comforting how unprofessional medical professionals can be (in a good way). I'm used to the people in medicine being kind of distant, but the more interactions that I have, the more everyone starts to seem like a person. I had a light hearted talk with one of the interns at the fertility clinic about the porn selection (it's not bad, he tells me), and now I know about the payroll technician's (the one here) career ambitions and the other guy (I don't know his name) is leaving soon to take a motorcycle safety course.

I suppose I like when these people start to look like humans because I hope it means that we look like humans to them. Although I want the people treating my wife to not be guided by emotion in any decision, I also don't want to feel like a product wherein our only function is to eventually lead to a paycheck. I think this is one of many problems with our healthcare system, every person and every illness is a dollar value. I like being humanized.

In the future I should refrain from writing blog entries from waiting rooms on my fake keyboard. It keeps attempting to make often hilarious typos (sorry if any got through), and it's too slow for me to make really coherent thoughts. Now I know.

Edit: typos (breast imagining?).