I'm a 30!

As my friend, doctor, and double bass duet partner Deborah opened the door today when I went over to play with her, she greeted me with “You’re a 30!” The significance of this will be entirely lost on you if you didn’t catch last week’s saga of the Russian doctor Yuri blankly watching me crumple into a sobbing wreck after he told me that my radiation treatment would have to be postponed because my thyroid hormone level was at 8.92 when it had to be at least 30. I can only equate my emotional state to that of the astronauts when a shuttle launch is scrapped and they are left sitting on the launchpad with no information about when it will be reinstated. Only in my case, a delay meant even greater time off Synthroid, the synthetic hormone that makes my body think it still has a thyroid. Last week I left the Nuclear Meds Department of WHC angry over lies and incompetence.

Today, however, things are turning around. Here’s what happened. At 8:30 I showed up at Deborah’s office for a blood test by the slickest lab tech in DC, a black guy named Sean. Just in and out in no time with no pain, no bruising. At around 10 AM each morning a courier picks up the little vials of blood and delivers them to a lab back at WHC. Deborah, who was returning from Florida today, sat in the airport in Tampa with its Wi-Fi connection and logged into her account with the lab to learn of the results around 12 noon. When she got home this afternoon, she called the Nuclear Meds guys, who were simply incredulous that she had results within hours of the test, and worked out a plan to get things back on track. She printed the “evidence” out for me and presented me with it as we sat down to play Handel, Bottesini, and Dittersdorf.

Neither of us had practiced much recently, both complaining that one part without the other is not nearly as interesting. But we made wonderful music anyway today. I know when to start now just by listening to her breathe and draw her bow back. Her bass was rich and full after getting a small crack in the shell mended. We observed the dynamics and distinguished the excited faster sections from the slow and luxurious largos.

I ate my unsalted peanut butter on whole wheat bread snack before heading off to yoga, where none other than Jamy showed up. What a nice surprise! My downward dogs and lunges were never so energetic, even with my totally out-of-whack thyroid hormone level. I can finally see the end of this ordeal and I can’t wait to get there.

In the spirit of Jamy’s posts, I am today grateful for Deborah – for her friendship and her skill and wisdom as a physician who definitely passed the course in bedside manner with flying colors!

Now I have to lobby to be declared “safe” to return to humanity by next Wednesday so as not to miss the next Blogger happy hour, where indeed I will have something to celebrate...