The long corridor in radiology again. I’ve sat here so many times. All the way at the back. Waiting area 3. It’s not the first waiting room of this year. It won’t be the last. But this time I’m waiting here for myself. Not just alongside someone else.
There are stickers on the floor pointing the way to the emergency room. They’re new. The actual entrance is being renovated. For now, the people who aren’t brought in by ambulance have to come through this corridor.
It’s once again a reminder of how much worse everything could be. I have to wait a long time. An hour will pass before I take off my sweater.
Emergencies are wheeled into the room ahead of me. They all look as though this is the worst time of their lives right now. The big emergency I don’t see at all. Maybe that’s for the best.
Others wait in their beds for their name to be called. They too line up behind the emergencies.
A little more than half a year ago I was lying on the side of this corridor. Or would have been lying there. After all, I had COVID. They didn’t want to make me wait there. Quick in, quick back out. Did I look like that too? Or would I have looked like that?
And today I’m sitting here. Waiting. Post-operative follow-up. I’m not an urgent patient, just a patient who’s in a bit of a hurry because there’s still work waiting at home. But hurrying is out of place here. You follow the rhythm of the place. I just slot back into this rhythm for a while, only to break out of it again afterward.
An IV line is put in, and the contrast agent feels the way it always does — as if the trip to the bathroom had been just a little too far away. I’ll never find that pleasant.
Images are taken. On to the next doctor — the one who operated on me back then. The doctor is satisfied. He tells me that in the 1980s the whole thing could have turned out differently with equal probability. I’m not only satisfied as well, but also grateful.
And even better: I’m allowed to do everything I want again. Finally. Next check-up in a year. By the next check-up I want to have returned to my old physical self. Now that the last burden, the doubt of these past months, is gone, that feels within reach. I’ve managed it before, and I’ll manage it again. But I’ll indulge one more time: there will be celebratory Franzbrötchen.
I leave the hospital happy. But grounded, like every time in these past years. The happy part is new. And today I allow myself to feel it. Surely it won’t come back to bite me somewhere else.1
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I know … famous last words … ↩
Wie auch immer, für mich ein eindringlicher Hinweis, regelmäßig zu Vorsorgeuntersuchungen zu gehen (was ich eh mache).