You Don’t Normally See That
February 19, 2007
The receptionist at St. Vincent's Hospital directed me to the orthopedic surgeon's office, down the hall, left at the chandelier, past the portrait of the mysterious woman in black, and then further down the hallway until you come to a bank of elevators on your left, you can't miss them, and take the elevator to the 7th floor. I started down the hall but was stopped by a guard who asked me if I knew where I was going. Yes, I said, and then nodded politely while he gave me precisely the same directions.
My appointment was for eight a.m., two hours before I was due at work, which I foolishly thought would be plenty of time, but filling out forms and waiting to be called, then filling out more forms and waiting to be x-rayed, then posing for x-rays and waiting for them to develop, then taking them back to the reception area to sit and wait some more, meant I was wrong.
"Whatchit!" snapped an old woman to her elderly escort when he bumped her wheelchair into the doorway. "Get this thing off of me!" she said, trying to lift what appeared to be some sort of collapsible aluminum walker that was resting on her lap.
The old man in a dapper suit pushing the wheelchair apologized to his little pumpkin and put aside the contraption, while one seat away, a thick-necked linebacker in a New York Giants football jersey looked up from his out-of-date Sports Illustrated for a moment, continuing to absentmindedly turn the pages of the magazine with his chubby, udder-like hands.
Aside from me, he was the only person who wasn't in a wheelchair, on crutches, or in a cast.
"James?" the receptionist called.
"Yes?"
"Follow me."
The nurse slid my X-rays under the clips of a wall-mounted light box, flipped the switch, and told me the doctor would be right in. I studied the X-rays while I waited, comparing my flesh and blood hand to the glowing photos. Huh, what's that squiggle running up my arm? A blood vessel? That's weird.
The bones in my hand turned out to be fine, which was what the doctor expected; he'd only dosed me with X-rays to be sure. The problem with my hand has nothing to do with my bones and everything to do with Irish heritage and diabetes. A winning combination!
" Dupuytren's contracture appears most in people of Northern European ancestry," the doctor said. "And people with Irish heritage represent the single largest group."
"You don't say."
And my other related problem, the much cooler-sounding but equally annoying trigger finger, has been linked to diabetes.
Actually, from what I've read online since my appointment, both conditions have been linked to diabetes, but then again, what hasn't? Being diagnosed as a diabetic when I was sixteen years old was a bit like being told I had a terminal illness and given fifty years to live. Which, of course, is a hell of a lot better than being diagnosed with cancer and only given a year, but still, in the back of your mind, you know what's going to get you in the end. Not that minor hand surgery is a big deal, and it's certainly nothing to get depressed about, but it's not the hand surgery that bothered me; it was something else in the x-ray.
"Your bones look great," said the doctor. "But—" and then he looked over the questionnaire I'd filled out in the waiting room. "Ah, yes, diabetes. See this here?" he said, pointing to the light gray line running up the X-ray. "That's a blood vessel. It's not normal to see a blood vessel in an X-ray."
"Yeah, I was wondering about that."
"Yours are calcified. It's not uncommon to see it in someone who's had diabetes for as long as you have." He glanced at my questionnaire again and then went on to describe elastic rubber tube-like normal, healthy blood vessels, versus the crunchy cement straws in someone like me.
"How bad is it?" I asked.
"Well—it's not good ."
"But you've seen worse."
"I've seen worse."
In the meantime, hand surgery next month. Stay tuned for the excitement!
