28. Georgie
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
GEORGIE
Past Georgie was an idiot. I speak about myself in the third person and past tense because present Georgie, the real-time me, doesn't exactly feel fully human right now.
Past Georgie let her vagina do the talking, make all the decisions, and she decided wrong.
She thought that it would be a grand old idea to get railed by her boyfriend, thought nothing of what it would mean for her HS and what it would do to her body or how it would make her wish for something stronger than Tylenol and Epsom salts baths or alcohol if she could drink it anymore.
In listening to the devil, she brought on a world of pain for the present me, who is barely able to sit or stand or think without wanting to cry.
So like I said, past Georgie is a fucking idiot.
Birdie knows something is up; she gets me things without me even needing to ask.
Give my regards to Past Noah, who isn't an idiot and who thought training Birdie would be helpful, and he was right.
I spend the next three days in bed, unable to do much more than struggle my way to the bathroom, go and then struggle my way back to bed to lie face down on the mattress.
Noah has taken the time to take care of the work needing to be done at Get Crafty Co.
, and though I text Abi a million apologies she actually told me to shut up and rest before she fired me for harassing the boss with stupid text messages, and I knew that all was forgiven with her.
I call my doctor, I beg them to move my appointment from a few weeks from now to the soonest they can get me in, as politely as possible, threatening that if they don't find the time or make an effort, I will make their lives miserable by going to the local emergency room.
When asked why I was there, I would tell them that my doctor was too busy to see me, and the reason was not for a professional or personal emergency.
I'd done it before when she went on vacation for a week, booked an appointment with me and then didn't come back from the vacation until a week after my appointment and never told me.
Imagine my surprise when I returned to the office to find out the doctor wasn't even in the country.
Needless to say, the ER reported my doctor and ever since then, I've been more diligent in my insistence.
No more Miss Nice Georgie. My health was more important than her vacations, and I was going to make her make it a priority or find someone else who would.
Standing outside the doctor's office, it looms in front of me like a grey cloud. I knew it would catch up to me eventually, I just had hoped I had more time. I know to go in with low expectations and even lower standards on what will be said or done, but as I clutch the list of things I compiled this morning of topics to discuss, so I don’t forget, there’s a gut feeling that this visit is a waste and it makes me want to turn around and just go home to Noah and Birdie.
At least I know they will be happy to see me, even if he’s anxiously preparing for the Baby Sprinkle tomorrow with the help of Franny—the party planning genius.
The doctor’s office is built inside an old house, grayscale brick outside and all exposed wood trimmings inside.
Instead of the bedrooms they were in a past life, they’re now what I call the examination rooms of hell.
There are 5 varying levels of news to receive here, and each one has its own room.
Quite literally. I have been in each of the five rooms more times than I can count, but recently I find myself in what I like to call the ‘no good news room.’ There’s also the better news, and amazing news rooms, but those are ones I haven’t visited in a long time.
Then there’s the ‘bad news bears’ room with sad, peeling bear wall paper, and of course, there’s the ‘very bad news’ room..
In that room, I learned about future surgeries I’d need or the lack of treatments to be offered.
But slowly, that news shifted from a category 5 bad to a subpar 3.
I wonder if Dr. Harris knows she delegates her patients like this and wonder even more how she knows where to put a patient before she sees them.
As I check in at the front desk, I watch as a woman with an obvious lump on her shoulder walks into the ‘bad news bears’ room, the room a step before the ‘very bad news’ room, its little sad-looking teddy bears littering the walls, hence the name.
The door to the ‘very bad news’ room is closed, which is a good and bad sign.
Someone in there is getting the very bad news that is the namesake of the room, but the good news for me and the others in the waiting area is if that room is occupied, it means that our news can’t be that bad.
It’s a sad thought I make myself correct instantly; scolding myself for taking comfort in knowing someone else’s life-changing news means less severe news for me.
The moment I am sent to the ‘no good news’ room, I know I am in for more of the same.
As if I expected anything else. The walls in this room are an ugly light green with dark green trims and the exposed wood framing.
Her computer is tucked into the corner on a sad excuse for a desk table and her black roller chair is facing the door.
It feels slightly ominous, like she’s not actually present when she sits there.
I feel tempted to turn it away as I sit down in the neighbouring patient seat, avoiding that uncomfortable exam table like the plague.
If she wants my ass up there and sticking to the impossibly thin paper covering the cracking medical green leather of the table, she can ask for me to do so once we’ve talked.
Dr. Harris is average height, her pale skin is flawless as expected of most dermatologists, and her soft auburn hair is pulled back into a bun that’s greying but not fully, making her look as prim and proper as the way she sits in the computer chair as she greets me.
She wears her white coat like a badge of honour, and it really just makes me want to roll my eyes.
I like to think that the doctors who feel like they need to showboat their titles and prestige abilities always show off with their lab coat and some other form of 'look at me, look at me' bling.
Hers comes in the form of her lanyard, with her many buttons of glory for awards she'd won or received.
Dr. Harris taps the papers from my file to straighten them, which is likely only part of my file as I can only imagine how large it’s gotten over the years.
She adjusts her narrowed tortoiseshell glasses up the bridge of her nose, only for them to slowly slip down again.
Her expression looks pinched at the edges, and I can only wonder what the very bad news was in the other room that may have tainted her composure.
Maybe that woman's lump was something that she couldn’t remove in a procedure here.
Maybe it was something that couldn't be removed at all.
Maybe it was... no, I didn't want to wish anything on that innocent woman and thinking it would only put that out into the universe.
I didn't want that guilt on my shoulders.
Dr. Harris clears her throat, her telltale sign that she's about to speak and I should listen. It seems everything about her today is amplified by a thousand and only pisses me off more than it already does.
She clears it once more before her voice fills the room, "Georgia, I've seen the notes from Natalia that tell me you're not satisfied with your care again, I do apologize if that was my doing in any way, and I do hope I can help in some way today.
Now, it says here you've called a few times about flares, and I was unable to fit you in for a visit.
Are you currently experiencing one now?"
"Yes." I say with a gritted jaw. I knew that anything I said over the phone was like transcribed or written in notes by the receptionist, but it was never fun to be put on blast for asking for help.
"Okay, so I'd like to see that in a minute. I’ll grab you a gown. But overall, how have things been?"
So, we discuss my medications, the long course antibiotics I have been on and off for years that do nothing but make my stomach churn.
The drug typically used for cancer patients that did nothing for me other than make my hair thin and add to the nausea.
Birth control for obvious reasons and to control my periods.
We discuss my ways of coping with the flares.
The sitz baths, the hot compresses, the bandages I use that don't cause my skin to go haywire with hives and burns like previous supplies.
How old surgical spots are having reoccurrence at the edges of the scars.
It feels like a recap of everything and not how I am doing now or if that even mattered.
Because even before looking at anything, she's determined there is nothing more to be done other than what we're doing.
Of course, that's what she has to say. This isn't the good news room, but this isn't one of the bad news rooms either.
But no bad news did not mean this is good news.
Not in the slightest. If anything, this was the news that you didn't want because it meant nothing was going to be done because you were deemed unfixable.
"I have quite a few flare spots happening right now to look at," I remind her when she starts to close up my file.
She nods but doesn't look up from her notes and the computer screen, "Yes, but unfortunately, as you know, we can only tackle so much per visit because my time is so broken up across patients, so if you can select the most pressing issue..."