She's Not a Fan

Chapter 17

Monday morning, Sarah was at the Family Medicine clinic listening to a patient with a growing sense of dread.

Jerry Angus was a stoic sixty-six year old man who had visited the Emergency Department one year ago because of rectal bleeding. 

“They shoved a tube up my ass and I don’t know what they saw, but I wasn’t havin’ no surgery.  I told’em so.  So, they says, there ain’t nothin’ we can do for you.  That’s what they told me, there ain’t nothin’ they could do.

“Fine.  If I was gonna die, I wasn’t gonna spend my last days just sittin’ waitin’ for it to happen.  So I quit work, sold my house and everythin’ in it, and took off for Europe and Australia.  I always wanted to go there.  So I packed up and off I went. 

“I’ve had a few bits of bleeding from my bee-hind while I was gone, but nothin’ like that first time.  In fact, I feel great, never better.

“But I’m runnin’ out of money.  Didn’t think that would happen.  Thought I would run out of life first,” he snorted.  “Pretty much have nothin’ left – no house, no stuff, just the shirt on my back.  So, I’m askin’, when’s it gonna to happen?  When’s the big day?” He looked at her, frustrated.

That was odd.  If he was diagnosed with cancer of the bowel or rectum, he should have been much sicker now.  She looked in his chart.  The last note was from the Emergency Department visit.  “Have you had any weight loss, Jerry?”

“Nope, none to speak of.”

“Any night sweats or fever?”

“Nope.”

“Have your bowel movements been regular?”

“Yup.  Once a day, like clockwork.”

Something didn’t jive.  “Let me go back in your chart and see what the Emergency note says.”  She clicked on the Emergency note and the accompanying result from the sigmoidoscopy. 

Ah shit.  The diagnosis was haemorrhoids, not cancer.  Simple haemorrhoids.  They probably offered to band them.  Yikes.   He had no money, no home and no job, but also no imminent death.  And she had to break the news.  “Jerry, when they did the sigmoidoscopy, you know, put the tube up your bum to take a look, they actually found haemorrhoids.  Not cancer.”

“Haemorrhoids?” he bellowed.  “What the hell’s a haemorrhoid?”

“It’s a dilated blood vessel.”

“Is it gonna kill me?”

“No, they’re usually harmless.  A nuisance, but not life threatening,” she replied slowly.

“But they told me there ain’t nothin’ they could do for me,” he insisted.

“Well, they probably meant that, other than creams to take away the itch and a small procedure to pinch them off, there’s really no other treatment.  If you didn’t want them to do the procedure, you could just live with them.”

“Live with them,” he said, his eyes wide.

She nodded sympathetically, letting the silence grow as he absorbed the information.

“You’re kidding me.  So now I have no house, no money, no job and no pension. I quit a week before my full pension would kick in.” He dropped his head in his hands.

“I’m sorry.”  His despair crept into her.  “Where are you staying now?”

“With my daughter.  It’s a little house ‘specially with me crammed in there.  I can’t stay long, but it’s a roof over my head.”  He rose slowly.  “I suppose I should be glad I spent the last year travellin’.  Wouldn’t have ever done that, even if I retired.  Wouldn’t have had the balls to go that far, spend so much.  It’s somethin’ I ain’t ever goin’ to forget.  I’ve been livin’ the last year thinkin’ each day was goin’ to be my last.  So first thing, I need to wrap my head around the fact that I ain't dyin’.  That’s goin’ to take some doin’.  But, you know, I won’t regret this past year, either.  Right now, it’s hard thing, but I’m gonna try,” he said tiredly.