Fried

Early-morning radiation appointments mean getting up, well, early. I was up at 5:30 Monday morning to leave at 6 to walk down and catch the 6:35 shuttle to get to the hospital at 6:55 for my 7:15 appointment.

I arrived in the basement of Mt. Zion to find a dark and deserted reception area. Even the fish in the waiting room aquarium floated around bleakly in their unlit greyness. The roll-top shutters on the reception windows were closed and locked tightly, like concession stands in empty stadiums. No one was in sight.

I took a seat in the waiting area and caught up on the Sunday paper, trying not to glance at my watch. Was the reception always closed in the early morning? Should I have taken a later shuttle bus? And eventually...Should I forego the check-in process of scanning my bar-coded card and proceed directly to the dressing room?

At last, at 7:12, the shutters rolled up and the lights flickered on. I asked the bleary-eyed receptionist eagerly, Can I scan in now? My appointment is in three minutes. I'm sorry, she said, I have to boot up my computer. It will take several minutes. Just go in and put your gown on and tell the doctors know you're here. (That's the function of the bar-coded scan card.)

After gowning, I realized there was no way from the waiting room to contact the doctors and techs, so, gowned from the waist up, I briefly snuck back out into the reception area to scan my card. A few minutes later, the tech poked her head into the waiting room, surprised to see me. Your receptionist only just arrived, I said. Really? said the tech. I had no idea. She said something about the carpets being replaced over the weekend, I answered, glancing around at workmen still moving furniture back into place.

After "assuming the position" on the radiation table, my neck torqued by the plastic neckrest, my face clamped down by the net "mask", I waited motionlessly and uncomfortably through some 10 minutes of whirring and buzzing until the tech reappeared to tell me I was done. Except she didn't. My computer crashed, she said. It will take a few minutes to reboot.

Luckily, the tech removed my mask and plastic neck-creaker and replaced them with a nice, hard pillow. After the computer got past its BSOD (blue screen of death...), I was put back in the vise and the process repeated. Now I was done, right? No.

I can't get the machine to work, said the tech. I'm calling an engineer in to fix it. You'll need to go back in the waiting room while I see if we can use the machine in the other room.

I made one too many turns trying to navigate through the maze of corridors en route to the waiting room, which ended up to be a good thing, because they were able to take me right away in the other radiation chamber. This time, the procedure went off as planned, although I staggered out with a serious crick in my neck.

My voyage to work also was not without adventure. I opted to forego waiting for the Muni bus from the hospital to the BART station, walking instead. It ended up being a pretty sketchy and colorful two miles of town. The train ride was without incident, but upon arrival at the East Bay station, I patiently read my book for about twenty minutes before remembering that the base shuttle only stopped at that station during the morning & afternoon rush hours. By the time I'd walked to the other station where the shuttle did stop, it had just come and gone...and it would be another hour before it reappeared. So it took a while to get to work, where inevitably I was greeted by all the work I haven't done lately.

Hopefully next time, the process will go a bit more smoothly.