Fear and Loathing in Building C

Last week I had an appointment with a hematologist after some low platelet counts--turns out, nothing to worry about.  The appointment was in Building C of the Emory Clinic, which houses their Winship Cancer Institute. (Smart folks at Emory, building "C" for Cancer). Terry and I had to drive separately, and planned to meet at the Hematology Department inside. I wound my way from parking to Building C though a maze of walkways and tunnels and eventually found myself at the entrance to C and thinking that I've not been in that building before.  All of my cancer treatments and direct follow up appointments were at Piedmont Hospital. I did wonder how my appointment with a hematologist was in the same building as the Cancer Institute but never really gave it any more thought.

As I turned into what I thought was the correct hallway, I got a huge rush of fear and bad memories when I found myself in the waiting room of the Infusion Suite, and saw about 50 people in there.  The IS at Piedmont is where I went for chemotherapy and the occasional fluid top-off.  For a brief moment I felt as if I was waiting for an infusion myself, and remembered the horrible discomfort and sickness those treatments brought me.

Then I heard, "Mike...Mike, this way" and turned to see Terry pointing me towards the  Hematology Department, right behind me.  It took me another moment to collect my thoughts, but learned I had only missed the last turn and was very close to where I needed to be for my appointment.

Every once it a great while now, something will trigger a memory from my treatment period and early post-cancer period that sends a chill up my spine.  One of the reasons I changed to the Emory system was to avoid going back to Piedmont hospital and walking those hallways again, and to avoid any memory triggers of their Infusion Suite.  So, I could run but not hide from them, as it turned out.

Other memories get triggered from time to time, and some of those from reading entries in this blog.  That is going to difficult as I re-read all of them again as I write the book I mentioned a while back.  That has now become my next large post-retirement project, one that will take several months to finish.  In a strange way, I actually hope that the book writing process and past blog entries does work to trigger some memories from my year of treatments and seven years of a hard-fought survival--that will make the book's stories easier for me to write and more vivid for its readers.

In the meantime I will pay better attention to the hallway signs in Building C and elsewhere around the Emory Hospital.