Visit to the Doctor
Last Monday, I had to visit a Hematologist. During some routine tests, my GP had found some readings out of whack, and while he believed there wasn’t anything to worry about, he wanted a specialist to take a look and confirm. I therefore found myself at the reception desk of the NYC Cancer Center on 34th Street, at 1:45 in the afternoon. The medical assistant efficiently confirmed my information, checked me in, and handed me an appointment sheet and a file that I was to take to the Seventh Floor.
The elevator disgorged me onto a small and crowded waiting room. The place was full of people. Most of them old people. Several of them with thinning or no hair. The atmosphere in the room was thick with gloom. The nurses were curt to the point of being rude to some patients. An old lady was being berated for showing up a week early for her appointment. She looked confused, and tried to dissemble when the nurse finally came to get her: “I wanted so badly to see you that I came a week early,” she said. I felt like putting an arm around her and telling her it was okay. I must confess I began to feel some slight trepidation.
The doctor himself came for me about 35 minutes late. In a quiet voice he said “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Ganapathy.” Dr. Moskovits was a balding, middle aged man with a dry manner. We walked back to his office, and as he was going to start, he was joined by another doctor who sat through the interview. I began to wonder, “Why does he need two doctors to confirm a routine diagnosis?” – I think I’m becoming a hypochondriac.
As the interview proceeded my anxiety only grew. The most routine question, when asked in that serious, dry, tone took on the most menacing implications.
“Have you had any scratching or itching?”
“No.”
Then I pause to think. Oh, oh… “Yeah I’ve been scratching, but it’s just dryness in this cold weather. It goes away after I apply cream.” I finally get a wan smile “Yes, we have a lot of that here in this weather.”
“Have you lost weight recently?”
“Yes, but I’ve been exercising.” I pause -- I used to exercise regularly in California too. Then why have I lost seven pounds in seven weeks? “It could be because I’ve been walking a lot more than I used to in California,” I try to explain weakly.
He completes his interview, examines me in another room, orders a battery of blood tests, and asks me to call him in a week. I return to the clinic later to have my blood drawn. The tests that have been ordered seem special – the technician has to call a couple of people before he understands what’s required and how it should be entered into the computer. He then proceeds to fill about 12 to 15 vials with my blood, which doesn’t do anything to reduce my anxiety.
I spend the next one week worrying. I begin to read up my symptoms at Webmd.com and Wikipedia. That doesn't help much.
I promptly call the doctor on Monday and get his assistant. I leave a message, but don't hear back, so I call again the next day. I get the assistant again, and leave another message. The doctor finally calls me back on Tuesday evening.
"All your tests came back fine. We don't know why your platelet count is borderline." he says. "We'll test again in a few months, but there's nothing to worry about." I breathe a sigh of relief. I then read an article in a recent Newsweek where this vegan talks about how his diet makes doctors suspect cancer every few years. I'm not vegan, but that sums up what seems to have happened in this case too.
An uneventful week
The week was uneventful enough, with a few meetings around mid-town, and some friends who came home with their children on Friday evening. This friend, another classmate from business school, was a high-flying banker at one of the bulge-bracket investment banks before he got laid off recently, and he was using this time to think about his future options. There’s no doubt that we’re seeing the impact of the economic crisis in very personal ways – everywhere one looks, someone we know has been laid off. His wife is a Surgeon in the New York City hospital system and they live in a lovely apartment that they own, half a block from Central Park, a few blocks north of the Met. Truly, a dream location.
Sketching animals at the Museum of Natural History
On Saturday, we had brunch and headed out to the Museum of Natural History. Dhruv loves drawing only a little less than he loves animals, so we packed his drawing materials and lots of paper into a backpack, and caught the M16 across town.
At the Museum, we headed straight for the African Animals exhibit, where I sketched a Buffalo, Eland, Lion, Cheetah, Leopard and Tiger. Tourists milled around us, camera in hand, not pausing to enjoy the dioramas or enjoy the scene the artist had created for them. They say many people go on vacations to photograph and videograph things so that they can see them later. A lot of people around us sure seemed that way.
I continue to be thankful for this opportunity to spend quality time at these great museums. At lunch with a friend on Friday, a New York native, she said she was pleasantly surprised by how active we had been in the past eight weeks. As a native, she often took these things for granted, while we were living life with the assumption that our stay here was going to be limited to one year. This friend is going to India on vacation in a few weeks, and has been to the Taj a few times. I lived in Delhi for several years, and have yet to see the Taj!!
Another perspective on Central Park
After we got out of the Museum, it was a fine day, so we decided to walk to Central Park and spend some time there. We entered at around 79th street, and got a completely different perspective on the park. Central park continues to fascinate us. While the concept of a green lung in the heart of a city is not new, the way New York has done it is fantastic. On good weather days, the place is teeming with lots of people – folks walking dogs, children playing, cyclists and joggers working out a sweat…
Dhruv loves climbing the rocks in Central Park, and we watched him clamber all over one set, and enjoyed the view. The sight of the tall skyscrapers of Manhattan in the background, with a lake, trees and rock in the foreground, is really something to be experienced. I didn’t have a camera with me, but took a few grainy pictures with my Blackberry, to record the moment.
We then walked on, and came upon a small crowd of people by the side of a road. We peeked in and saw they were arranged around a jazz band, waiting for the band to resume playing. A few minutes later, the band leader shouted out to someone in the crowd, and convinced him, a random bystander, to join them on the guitar.
The band wasn’t bad, with the leader sometimes playing two trumpets at the same time. In addition, there was an electric guitar, drum and double bass. We stayed for three or four numbers, and thoroughly enjoyed it – perhaps the setting and ambience made a normally mediocre band sound good.
We walked along towards Columbus Avenue, and on the way we came upon a couple of African Drummers doing their thing near the Sheep Meadow. Sandhya and I recently saw “The Visitor”, an Indie movie that won Richard Jenkins an Oscar nomination for his role in it. Set in Manhattan, it has this wonderful scene of 15-20 African drummers beating out a hypnotic rhythm in Central Park. These two drummers are perhaps a precursor of what’s to come in the summer, and we look forward to attending in person.
We’re beginning to understand why New Yorkers are crazy about the park, and why rents and property prices in the close vicinity of the park are so sky-high. We’ve recently been asking ourselves where we’d live if we were to move within Manhattan. While we love Waterside because there’s so much to do within our own little community, I think staying close to the park might be high on our list of criteria if we were to look for alternates.
Winding down
When we returned, Sandhya and Dhruv went to call on our Pakistani neighbors. Their Indian daughter-in-law and granddaughter were visiting from Connecticut, and Dhruv played there for a while and Sandhya made a new friend. Dhruv and I went for a short swim thereafter.
Sunday was a foggy and rainy day, so we stayed indoors. Ramesh, Charu and their kids stopped by in the afternoon, and we spent several hours playing Uno, Pictionary, and a couple of new games that they had brought.
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