Ice Cream Truck

 

To show their appreciation for all our hard work, the museum hires an ice cream truck to serves us free ice cream. Everyone who walks past my desk asks if I’m having any, and I tell every one of them that I shouldn’t eat ice cream. It shouldn’t bother me –there are just not many things considered “treats” that are diabetic-friendly- but it does. 

My appointment is an hour earlier than usual, and on a Thursday rather than a Wednesday. It’s nice not to have to use the scooter on the bus. 

As I’m waiting to check in, three security officers suddenly start running like mad down the hall as one of them yells, “Clear a path! Clear a path!” I realize the woman at the desk has been trying to get my attention and I apologize for being distracted.

I head upstairs and have only sat for a few moments when the door opens and a woman I’ve never seen before calls my name. She’s older, with fried red hair and huge bangs. Her name is Bridget and she leads me to room three, which I’ve rarely been in. It’s tucked back in the corner and cramped. A sticker of a smiling octopus with the word SUCKER is slapped on the glove dispenser. “Code gray room 221, Code gray room 221,” a voice on the intercom says. 

Bridget is friendly and chatty. She’s only been here a few months but she’s worked in wound care for ten years. “I worked with KC at Vital,” she says. Vital is apparently a clinic that specializes in helping people get off respirators. “Everyone’s in pretty rough shape there,” she says. 

She draws a line along the cast then saws it in two, only it doesn’t come apart, so she goes back over the line again and again and eventually goes to get Shelley. Shelley immediately sees where the cast is so thick it needs extra cutting. It still takes a long time to cut it off. Bridget apologizes and says they didn’t do casting at Vital. 

She changes my bandages and says that the doctor only does debriding once a week. She gets the casting and water bucket ready and I can tell that she’s preparing for the finicky Dr. Thompson. 

True to form, when the doctor comes in she immediately adjusts my chair and complains about how tiny the room is. As she wraps the cast material I ask where she’s traveled to lately and she says Thailand. I try to get her to talk about it but she just asks, “Is that ninety degrees?” meaning my foot. I tell her it’s as close as I can get. 

She doesn’t splash as much as usual, and when Bridget drops a fifth roll into the water, she looks at it and says, “You know, I think this is big enough.” My foot does, indeed, look huge. Bridget apologizes for wasting the roll but the doctor tells her not to worry about it, then fishes it out and throws it into the trash bin. 

 Once the cast is dry I put on my shoe and hobble over to the reception desk to ask when my next appointment is. “8:00 Monday,” says Bree. I tell her that was this week, and she looks annoyed. “It’s every Monday and Thursday.” I tell her I thought this was only once a week, and really can only get out of work in the late afternoon. 

“It’s twice a week until your wound goes down,” says Shelley. “They should have told you that.”

“I’m going to have trouble making that,” I say, feeling a wave of anxiety rising up. It was hard enough to convince them to let me have this Monday morning off, now I have to go through this every week, for how many weeks? 

“If you can’t making it we’ll have to skip the cast,” says Agnes, passing by. 

I feel sick to my stomach when I leave. I’ve been trying so hard to balance things in a way that will make my life bearable, but I see now that I am failing. Whatever hope I had of being able to live even a moderately normal life has been shattered. I’m exhausted from trying to take care of myself. What’s the point when the only reward is extending the finish line a few extra hobbled steps? My life is miserable. I should have just said to hell with it and gotten in line with all my healthy, non-diabetic coworkers and ordered a big cone of lavender salted caramel.