DISCOVER CARD

I finally emailed Dr. Ranjan yesterday to get the results of my spinal tap.
The spinal tap would reveal if I had certain diseases.
Diseases that are treatable.

I realized that they were not going to contact me, I had to contact them.
Whatever is going with me and this terrible disease, doesn’t live in the same time constraints as the rest of the world, certainly not New York.

I have plenty of time, because my terrible disease really has no treatment!

If they had discovered I had a different disease, a treatable disease, they would have (I suppose) contacted me (right away) to begin the hopeful and happy treatments and medications to stem this horrible but treatable disease and my story could have turned into a tale to be repeated often by friends and office-mates of how one shouldn’t believe what doctors initiallly say, it’s not always as bad at they predict, look what happened to Charlie Roberts, (my fake name for this blog) they misdiagnosed him and he’s alright!

(Good ol' Charlie Roberts)

Instead I get an email back from the Doctor as follows;

Hello,

We should certainly meet. Please give Aisha a call at 212-325-1317 and she will schedule you for a follow up visit with Dr. Mitsumoto.

Ali A Ranjan, MD


Ugh.

So...

I called my sister last night to tell her about the visit.
When I speak to my sister she is cautious, reserved and kind to me.
She is slow and methodical in her responses, like she’s on the witness stand and doesn’t want to give away information that may lead to persecution of the defendant.

She wants to be there for me for this final visit,

“another pair of ears, one’s fight or flight instinct naturally kicks and you simply can’t hear what they are saying”.

My sister has taken care of most of my medical appointments.
During my intitial appointments, when they told me I could be in trouble (serious trouble)
I simply couldn’t take it in at one time. It was information overload.

For me.

If I had been accused of a serious crime (which is kind of what it felt like)it was as if my sister was my top drawer lawyer who was processing the information for me and telling me which court date I needed to show up to.

My sister speaks to me on the phone in a low-vulume, measured voice.
This is not normally how we would talk. My sister is an emotional animal like myself and I imagine is getting coaching from a therapist on how to speak to me. I appreciate this.

She apologizes for having to deliver the harsh factual reality of my situation. (I've done no research myself, and she has done some (a lot?) and I bet this is somewhat pressureful for her.

I tell her " I’m FINE I feel FINE, and those doctors don’t know!"

My sister (using her controlled even voice) has to push back, “that's what terminal cancer patients say”.

There are pauses (long) as we move along the conversation not wanting to say things that will put the idea into my head to hang myself.

“Well, I say, I’ll have to think about all of this” which means the exact opposite, which means (I will put this our of my head forever and make a turkey burger and finish the last thirty pages of Slaughterhouse Five)

The reason I’m reading Slaughterhouse Five is that about twelve years ago I did DISCOVER card commercial with Kurt Vonnegut. I hadn't read one of his books, except the Wand Jane play.

I didn’t have much to do in the commercial, I played a tailor fitting him for a suit.

I put it on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XZMq9KtHYg

(You have to cut and paste it in your browser to watch it)

I remember the casting director called me directly for the job. (Usually they call your agent)

I refused to return the casting director's calls because I thought it was a salesrep from the Discover Card offering me a deal.
He kept leaving messages. "I'm calling regarding the Discover Card" at which point I'd hit delete.

The booking was easy, Kurt Vonnegut was nice and I wanted to ask for his autograph but I thought a professional New Yorker doesn’t risk such things.

At one time, part of being a true New Yorker was to be unimpressed in any situation.
I think that’s gone now (that New Yorker attitude) The City is so livable now, it’s invited a whole cast of wholesome and polite types that would have brought CATS CRADLE had him sign it, taken a digital pciture with him, posted it on facebook and so on.

Now that all I do is eat and pick up after myself and read novels I'm catching up to my Kurt Vonnegut experience.
It's a really enjoyable book, Slaughterhouse Five. Took me until page 150 to get into it because of figuring out the rules of the world of the novel.