Crabs of a Kind

Dr. Elle has not been feeling well.  She massages her chest lightly now and then while seeing patients.  Her face crumples in pain unpredictably, but she carries on, seeing patients as often as she can in the different clinics and hospitals she moonlights in.

On her last day at the clinic (where we both moonlight), she goes straight to the hospital after her duty and dies.  Metastatic breast cancer.

I usually arrive early for my clinical duties such that I often meet the owner before she signs off.  I leave stuff on the table in preparation for my turn to see patients.

During acute attacks, my gait seems normal on the surface because I have learned to move my body through my pain.  Arthritis is the legacy of the aging.  Pain, Heberden’s and Bouchard’s nodes are the yoke of arthritis.  Outgrowths at the end joints of fingers are called Heberden’s nodes, while those on finger joints nearest to the palm are called Bouchard’s nodes.  I have not developed either kind of nodes, but the pain I occasionally feel is just as intense as though I’ve got both.

It is lunch hour, and the female patient sits waiting.  She says she is there just to visit and talk to a health professional, preferably me.  I vaguely remember her face, but she seems to remember me well enough.

My gracious friend, the clinic owner, leaves the patient to me before going home.

The patient tells me she has metastatic breast cancer.  She asks, “Am I going to die?”  The answer is too hauntingly real.

I tell her, “I am certain we all will, as sure as seasons will change.”

She looks at me, wide-eyed, seemingly with a blob of tear forming in both eyes, then she suddenly laughs, an infectious laugh that echoes through the aseptic walls of the clinic.

I hold her hand and smile through her pain.  Health professionals are not immune to the specter of disease and, more importantly, to the gift of affection.  No mortal is.

We discuss things she cares to talk about.  Silence punctuates the air when the talk gets emotional.

She holds my knuckles in a tight squeeze, with a face divided between smiling and crying, before she leaves.  I shall never see her again.

I go back to the doctor’s chair, rummage through the table and open an envelope with a report that contains words like “metastases,” etc.

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The crab is the symbol of cancer, both the zodiac sign and the medical condition.  Some cancer cells penetrate normal tissues with projections that resemble crab’s claws, hence the moniker.

“Cancer” is also a Latin word for crab.