Overture, Curtain, Lights!
On with the show this is it
-B. Bunny
“Excuse me…pardon me, please…excuse me…”
Balancing a bathtub-sized carton of popcorn in one hand and a delicious icy cup of high fructose corn syrup in the other, I banged down the dark row of knees until I found my seat. Yes, even oncologists find time to enjoy the fun that modern cinema provides to the hard-working citizens of this country, who clamor for high-quality productions that only our thoughtful studios have the courage to release. I settled into my luxurious movie-theatre-style seat (which I might add was not a coincidence, seeing that I was at the movies), and waited for the big show to begin.
And waited…and waited.
After absorbing a slide show presentation that seemed about as long as a country sermon delivered to a room full of parolees, the lights finally dimmed. Oh, boy, I thought - get ready for a feature film full of fabulous scenes that will delight the memory years from now when I’m resting quietly in my room, too feeble to do the Jumble. No curtain opened, like in the old days - the giant white screen just jumped to life with a kaleidoscopic montage of furious action and a thunderclap of sound that made me want to shout out “FIRE IN THE HOLE!” What a movie!
Except this wasn’t the movie that I had shelled out a fistful of dollars for. For cryin’ out loud - I was watching a commercial for a delicious icy high fructose corn syrup concoction! And after that came ads for wireless telephones, large trucks that apparently are driven only on Arizona mesas, kids in ridiculously undersized t-shirts, and one commercial that completely left me baffled as to what product or service was being plugged although I laughed at the dancing wombats. I shifted in my seat and eyed the haystack of popcorn before me, trying to follow my general guideline of not digging in until the actual film starts. (We oncologists can be quirky, too, you know).
Suddenly the screen went black, and the logo for the great and powerful chain that owned this building (and my undivided attention for the next two hours) blasted forth like a vision from the mighty wizard himself. It’s about time - enough with the commercials already! If we wanted to watch ads we could stay home and lounge in front of the idiot box. But wait - the massive logo held a caption within it that announced not the start of the movie, but the bane of impatient patrons: COMING ATTRACTIONS. I began to feel grease oozing through the cardboard tub nestled in my lap, and made a face similar to that seen on a teacher who has just observed a volley of spitballs arc across the back row of her classroom.
Trailer after trailer assaulted my increasingly annoyed retinas. By the fifth preview I found that I had forgotten the name of the picture I came to see, and plopped chin on hand in disgust. I found myself muttering certain colorful phrases that could provide entree onto a pirate’s galleon. My mind, which has a tendency to treat episodes of boredom with mortifying disrespect, began to wander to and fro.
Then two separate neurons collided upstairs, forming what critics call an original thought, and I realized that this frustrating wait reminded me of what my patients might feel like when they are waiting for test results to come back. Patients who undergo biopsies are often forced to endure delays like a moviegoer slumped into a seat who realizes he could calculate pi to the fifty-thousandth decimal place by the time the stupid show starts. Waiting for special stains, for flow cytometry, for outside consultations to return and finally deliver an exact diagnosis drives patients nuts - and with good reason. No one wants to be left drifting in the sea of anxiety that flows between the time a lump is found and the question on everyone’s mind is answered. Patients, like restless moviegoers, can only take so much dilly-dallying until they both finally shout out:
“Let’s get the show on the road!”
For better, or for worse - whether the movie is the greatest film ever conceived by humankind or a disgraceful ollapodrida of cinematic bovine, ovine and equine diarrhea, at least stop torturing us with fluff and get on with it! As for doctors who don’t feel the need to hunt down pathologists or radiologists and hog-tie them until they come up with a coherent report - stop hanging around like a sloth on Valium and get cracking! Think of how you would feel if it were your future hanging in the balance, and the runaround was the only gift your doctor was considerate enough to give.
A test result may not be happy news, but for better or for worse at least the waiting will be over and the epic can begin.
