Download Positive Perspective: Sitting, Waiting, Wishing. Every three or four

Positive Perspective: Sitting, Waiting, Wishing. Every three or four months I have to go see my doctor at the County Clinic and as congenial and skilled as the staff is, I dread my visits there. For one, I hate hospitals. Not just because it’s a place where people go when they are ill – so, inevitably, there is a dolorous cloud in the area – but there is a lingering odor of something I have never been able to describe. Perhaps liquorice gone sour or burnt plastic fused with some Moonlight Lavender Febreze®? It doesn’t smell necessarily bad, it’s just… distinct. Nothing about hospitals excites me. The walls are all painted white, everybody’s wearing white, the magazines in the waiting room are all the same and if you dare read an article, the boredom in which you found yourself picking up the glossy volume might intensify your disinterested self into checking again what time it is. Yep! It’s still fifteen minutes to ten. There are two waiting rooms. Waiting Room # 1 is where you check in. If you have an appointment or are a walk‐in, we are all in there waiting for a nurse to call our name. Waiting Room # 2 is (on Wednesdays specifically) where a nurse will take you so you can see the infectious disease doctor. I get along with the nurses. Their familiar faces smile when they see me, as they all call me by my name and enthusiastically ask how I am – not just a black and white “how are you doing?”. That part, I enjoy. A few nurses show me pictures of their grandkids and fill me in on the latest family reunion, or trips they have taken over the past few months. Sadly, that part only lasts around five to eight minutes. I am then placed with the rest of the patients who are going to see the infectious disease specialist. That particular segment, that is the one I loathe. It is imminent that I will walk into that second waiting room and bump into someone I know. To be honest, I still don’t know how that doesn’t happen frequently. Santa Barbara is already a small town, and its GLBT community is even smaller. My latest strategy ‐ and yes! I do have a strategy, which I plan the night before ‐ is to bring some extensive reading and writing material to that waiting room. Focused and determined to finish whatever I am writing about, nobody says hi to me – I am a quiet, blasé patient who is not up for small talk. I like to think I am invisible. If I believe hard enough that I am not in this room right now, people cannot see me. It seems to work like a charm. Until it didn’t. As I’ve explained before, Wednesday is the only day of the week that the doctor in charge of infectious disease is present at the clinic. As you walk in to see a nurse who’s going to weigh you, check your blood pressure and all the standard work that has to be done, you are either taken to the left (destined for walk‐ins) or to the right (which is for those patients who are there to see the infectious disease doctor). Therefore, all of us HIV positive patients are herded together. There is no guessing whether one is or isn’t positive. We all know we are all positive. That said, around a year ago, a good friend of mine saw me in the first waiting room (the one where all patients, negative or not, are waiting). I went blue, green, yellow, red, black, purple, silver in the face. At that point I didn’t have a strategy of what I would say or do whether someone I know saw me at the clinic. Luckily, she explained why she was there before I did. A lame excuse about how her work stopped covering walk‐in visits and that she had to rush it to the clinic due to an upset stomach. I shyly replied “there must be a bug going around town, I feel the same way”. I smiled. She smiled. She went away. I sat there and replayed in my head what had just happened about five times. To see your infectious disease doctor is a roller coaster. If you have been taking your medication daily, it is beyond likely that your viral load (VL) will be undetectable and that your cell count is above 300. Though, there is that elfin amount of doubt that consumes me. What if the medication is no longer working and my VL will be in the hundreds of thousands? What if my cell count is struggling to remain above 200? Those 5 seconds before the doctor gives me the results of my blood work seem to last much longer than they really are. The rest of the visit revolves around the usual questions doctors ask their patients. I am a diligent patient and I list every single abnormal behavior my body has gone through over the past 4 months. Then I am sent home, with the hope that the next visit will be less stressful and that I will be more comfortable in the waiting rooms – but I know I probably will not. Charlie Brown: You know what hurts the most? Peppermint Patty: What? Charlie Brown: Pretending nothing's hurting. ~ Larry Russo