Monday 24 March 2014

The Scan (3)

After a ten week wait, I finally have my CT scan tomorrow. I've never waited this long for a scan before, it's been very stressful and has really stoked up my anxiety. It doesnt really help to learn that there are three million other people on NHS waiting lists in the UK at the same time. You have to get through the dark nights and difficult days yourself as best you can.

I've tried to take it one day at a time: some days have been bad, others have been better, few have actually been good. I found myself putting things off because I just couldnt commit to them when I could be called in to the hospital at short notice. The whole process grinds you down remorselessly. It's a type of torture that you have to do your best to resist. And when some other problem comes into your life, as inevitably happens, your stress levels go off the scale very easily.

Still, I've made it through the ten weeks reasonably intact - with plenty of help and support from friends and family. The scan itself, as far as medical procedures go, isnt too terrible. You sit and drink a liquid with metals in for an hour, then your take off your clothes and are laid on a narrow bed that sticks out from the scan machine. The operators retire to a glass fronted control room and the narrow bed slides you inside the machine. The machine whirrs and tells you to breathe in, hold your breath and breathe. It spins noisily around you for a while, stops, gives more instructions, spins again, stops and then slides you out.

You're done, you can go and get changed. Then the really bad waiting starts - for the results.



Scan
 
 
Awkward
on the skyline
a turreted house
the letter in my grasp
paint blisters
from the leaden door
one twist of the handle
and a draught sucks me in
overturned chairs
table laid for dinner
stove empty
 
the threshold
where steps echo down
to the knife-man basement
I crush the letter in my hand
and descend
a room
a single bed
I strip and lie supine
arms stretched beyond my head
 
Hold your breath
 
the wind howls
and the house spins around me
clothes broken plates and chairs fly
to the rattling walls and stick
my bed stays firm
the wind roars
and the house turns
every place I've lived screeches past my eyes
the wind eases
 
Breathe
 
 
 
 
This gothic poem was written during my long weeks of waiting.
 


2 comments:

  1. A difficult poem to read for me but so apt. It is even more difficult to be the one waiting on results of my husband's scans. I hated every one of them and his last one was minutes before he passed away the morning after we returned from a wonderful week in Lourdes in the Pyrenees, an area very special to us. Little did we know it would be our last week. Unfortunately the flight caused embolisms and we just made it to our local hospital . . . but the week in the Pyrenees did our boys and myself good in the long run as we have lovely memories from there. Am saddened tonight as I just heard another friend is going through the same process as yourself. Difficult times and the waiting is the worst part.

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    1. Thank you Aine for sharing your powerful and sad memories. I realise that when you are the patient its easy to overlook the impact of your illness on family and friends who are trying their best to support you. Thank you again, my thoughts are with you.

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