Running for My Life

This morning I met my mother at the local hospital to wait with her while my father was having a medical procedure.

It was an "out patient" procedure, not surgery, we we were reminded, which would help to determine whether or not he would need to have a kidney removed. He had been diagnosed with some new polyps that could be cancerous. My father, and mother for that matter, are really not very healthy folks, and this was (is) just one of many reasons we had found ourselves in the familiar surroundings of the pre-op... heart attacks, angiograms, angioplasties, stents, spinal fusions, hip replacements, and so on.

As we awaited the arrival of the operating physician (I really think he was playing golf--he was wearing the appropriate attire when he did arrive, and had yet to "scrub in"), the anaesthesiologist was trying to allay my parents concerns over the delay by having a playful conversation with them. My participation was limited to nods and smiles. At least until the conversation turned to my t-shirt.

"So do you run?" he asked me. My wardrobe consists mostly of the t-shirts I receive for registering at runs and races. Often they are conversation starters.

"Yes," I replied, trying to judge where this line of conversation could go.

"If you look at us," my father, ever the optimist, jumped in, "you can see he's running for his life!" My father then nodded to the roughly twelve inches of paperwork which comprised 'most of' his medical file that the doctor had pulled earlier when first considering the sleepy-time possibilities available to my father in anticipation of the procedure. (The spinal-epidural with a sedative chaser was chosen despite my his previous spinal fusion surgeries...)

My father then giggled about the size of the pile of papers, "Imagine that," he said, "that's not even all of it!"

While my parents and the doctor continued to joke (nervously) about the entire topic, I just stood there, uncomfortably smiling.

Breathe in, breathe out... YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!