WHO'S GONNA CALL FOR YOU WHEN MAYBE IT'S YOU WHO WILL BE THE GHOST?

If you have had medical procedures and are awaiting biopsy returns, or wanting to learn why you are being groomed to go back for more procedures, and the staff at the doctor's offices won't connect you with the person who has done the probing around in your insides, who you gonna call?

Don't call Ghostbusters, because male or female or inbetween, they can't help you. You ain't a ghost yet.

Yesterday Marsha wanted me to accompany her to her doctor's place in Park Slope. You have heard me bitch in times past about the steep hills and narrow streets of Park Slope, and how money can buy uniformed building security people to bend the laws and double park cars down the treacherous roadways.

I didn't really want to go. I was tired.

The tumor may have returned, but its blood-sucking and the operation (I mean Procedure) still had me feeling as if I was weaving in and out of the Twilight Zone. A separate physical medical situation was lending a nightmarish tinge to day-light hours.

But I knew she wanted me to go, so eventually I knew I'd go.

It was for Marsha.

It ended up being a fortuitous situation.

While I sat in the car on the steep slant of a Park Slope street by a fire hydrant, Marsha talked to her doctor about my inability to get ahold of the surgeon and learn exactly where we stood.

I had an appointment for next Tuesday.

I really would rather have some answers before a week goes by.

There is enough stress in life without having to endure uncertainty, especially when you are plagued by other medical horrors that aren't drinking your blood, but they sure are adding a pain inducing element to your life.

It may not be Vampiric, but it sure ain't fun, either.

Marsha calls me from her doctor's office on my cell phone.

He wants the surgeon's phone number.

So, here's the point. You don't call Bill Murray or Dan Ackroyd when the specter of haunting is with you; you get a doctor who knows how to play the New York medical system game.

Within 10 minutes, he had my medical report being read to him.

Two hours later, as I stood outside a Target, waiting for Marsha to bring the car around, and trying to find the reserves of energy to load the car, my cell phone rings again.

I am talking to the surgeon.

I know I would not have received this call, if people at the facility hadn't become aware that there was a savvy doctor looking into the case.

Now, as I informed you in earlier pieces, in the beginning no one was using words like Cancer and then tumors. It is almost a scripted drama. You use this word at this point in the story, at this moment of where you are in dealing with such health issues.

Here's the salient points cleared up in that phone call.

The tumor was much bigger than the surgeon had realized from the initial Endoscopy.

Rather than the size of an apple, it was more like a grapefruit.

He had to go down my throat three times, trying to get the slurping growth completely removed.

The biopsy had come back.

This is my bitch: Why not call and put the patient's mind at ease, or explain where you now are in the drama.

Why wait for days to stretch out without knowing the answer.

The growth that I had humourously referred to with Morbius, the Living Vampire quips was ppr-Cancerous.

It was a good thing it was caught.

But it was felt it was removed in time.

The reason I have to go back into surgery (I mean "procedure") is that they have make sure all the places that fed blood to the sucker are healed and closed, and there is no other bleeding going on.

The surgeon told me to cancel next Tuesday appointment.

He'd now told me everything he would have told me next week.

I love serials, I love Republic serials, I love continued stories,

just hate living them in daily life.

As I got off the phone, Marsha drove up.
It was time to load the groceries.

I told her how much had happened in the few minutes she went to get the car.

She was relieved that that part of the ordeal, of the questions and uncertainty, seemed over.

Thanks to all of you who have written with concern, and positive wishes.

I haven't the strength to answer everyone, but you all have been terrific.

And I'm glad I don't have to hang in there anymore.

Except...Wait!

Oh, damn!

That other thing is going to strike again!

Argh!

And Ghostbusters can't resolve that, either.

Don