The day of the scope is only good compared to the day before (i.e. The Day of the Prep)–it sucks, but it sucks a little less.

The first thing I realize–the first of the sucks–is that I have to ask someone to come and pick me up when it’s all over. I hate asking for help, which may be an issue I need to work on, but I had this epiphany that it’s also that I don’t expect people to show up. And that’s an issue I’ve been working on for a very long time.

Then it’s the walk to the nurses’ station to check-in and the idea slowly sinking in that you can’t fix yourself. That my personal body needs something that I can’t give it and something that’s not natural. It’s been manufactured by a guy in a white coat and now this other guy in a white coat is going to tell you to take it and behold the miracle of medical science. It’s going to fix a list of things (maybe it will, maybe it won’t) and it’s got a long list of side effects (maybe you’ll get them, many you may not).

I’m shown to my room. My own room, which is a nice thing. They all have the same little tiles in the bathroom and always in dull, drab colors. The same gown awaits me on the bed, blue and white patterned and with the same snaps and open back, yet impossible to put on every time. I take off my jewelry and put it in a specimen cup. The same kind of specimen cup that I peed into for my pregnancy test yesterday.

“I don’t see your pregnancy test results in here,” the nurse is panic flipping though my chart. I take a sharp breath in. “It says here that you are still getting your period.”

“That’s right,” I say it cautiously; I don’t know why. I try to exhale but it’s like the air is holding on, bracing itself.

She finds it. Holding it up with a sigh of relief, “It’s negative!” (She thinks she’s relieved).

I exhale. I thought maybe this was going to be some big practical joke, to have cheated motherhood all these years only to have my uterus rise up at the last minute and yell “last call!” I’d had sex a few days before and although I usually use the ever controversial pull-out method, there was a little misunderstanding.

“Did you just come in me?”

“Yeah,” from the mouth resting in the curve of my neck, “I thought you were on your period. You said something about blood.”

“Not from there.” Good lord! And then, please God, no.

This was the second close call of my sex years. All in all, not bad.

Just before they put me under the doctor asks again, “So you’re not taking anything now?”

I shake my head ‘no’ but to answer fully, I have to remove the BDSM-type mouthpiece that he’ll feed a camera on a tube through to see into my throat and stomach (and hopefully figure out what brought me to the ER), “No, and I really like it that way.”

The nurse puts it back in place and the look in his eyes says that’s all about to change. Lights out. Fade to black.

And then bright lights, a warm blanket, murmurs under masks. They’ve all seen some things, but no one’s talking. I’m wheeled back to my room and I hear a nurse describing the same things to someone new as I pass by. It’s like being in the arrival and the departure lounge.

I don’t want to land. I want to keep hovering in Lala land, far above the reality that awaits me below. This scope isn’t going to tell me anything I don’t already know. I need a treatment that’s a heavy hitter if I want to avoid these annual visits to the emergency room.

It’s not good. But it’s not as bad as the first time either, when I awoke to ulcerated dashes being drawn throughout my digestive system.

I’m tethered now. I need him now. I can’t get the drug by myself. I never wanted anything to hold me–not a marriage, not a mortgage, but now this medicine…

“I was supposed to travel,” I say during my first office visit where we talk about options and invasive procedures. They can’t get even get me in for the procedure for a month because of the pandemic. And they’re adding a big Q-tip shoved up my nose as an additional preparation.

“What, for like a week?” He clarifies.

I smile to myself. The first time explaining is the best; it plays out differently every time. “No…for like….my life.”

Registration the day of the scope has a comic interlude as the scheduler ask for an address.

“Just don’t put anything,” I offer.

“I have to put something, or you’ll look homeless.”

“What’s wrong with that? Do you think people will judge me?” That’s curiosity speaking, not challenge.

“Nooo,” she’s thoughtful, “I just don’t think it’s accurate.”

“Well, according to the state of Florida, I am.”

I like being on the fringe. I have no problem with being free of permanency and busting all the stereotypes around it. You wouldn’t think I was homeless if you saw me, and that’s good. Good to stretch our limited definitions of things by being confronted with alternative information. And I enjoy playing my part in that.

Too bad they can’t attach photos from my Out My Front Door collection. I’ve been places that cost nothing and take your breath away. I can get my camper into spaces within minutes that would never support a whole house and would take months if it could. And then, that’d be it. Your one view, day after day, year after year.

No thank you. There’s too much beauty to find and explore, and too many adventures await and many cool people are out there to meet and expand with. No matter how gorgeous a place is, I still wouldn’t want to stay there. I’d still want more. Because I only found that place by leaving a different amazing place. There’s a newness that I relish.

Movement is like my heartbeat, and I’m probably going into arrhythmia if I’m limited; if I start needing injections every few weeks and we don’t have the national healthcare to carry me.

So, adding to the logistics of where I go and where I stay and how I get there is now, “how do I get my medicine?”

How can this be?