I arrived at MD Anderson around noon and had a fruit smoothie for lunch. I went up to second floor to get a blood draw. When I finished there I went back to first floor to buy a paper to read while I waited for my 2:00 appointment with Dr. Duvic. As I sat down to read, I realized I had lost my cell phone.
I trudged back up to second floor to retrace my steps and hopefully find my phone. The tech who had done the blood draw was still there and when I asked her if she had found my cell phone. She said, “Yes. Just go to the front desk.”
I went to the front desk. I told the receptionist that she had my cell phone. She said she didn’t. We went back and forth until I could convince her to go back to the room where I had had my blood drawn. I triumphantly approached the tech and asked her to tell the receptionist that she had sent my cell phone to the front desk. The tech said she never found my cell phone - she thought I had come back to ask to use a phone to make a call.
After about 15 minutes of retracing my steps, I finally gave up and decided to leave my name at the main reception area on the first floor. I walked up to the desk and . . . there was my phone.
After having used up all my spare time, I went up to the dermatology department on the ninth floor. After waiting a few minutes, I overheard one of Dr. Duvic’s nurses say that Duvic was really behind in her appointments. I went up to her to tell her I had a 4:00 radiation appointment that I couldn’t miss, but I also very much needed to speak to Dr. Duvic. She said she would see what she could do, but Dr. Duvic was leaving Tuesday afternoon for the rest of the week. She said to touch base with her before my radiation appointment if she hadn’t gotten back to me.
At 3:30 I went back to talk to her. At 3:35 I had an exam room. One of the nurses came in to get a list of my current meds. As I gave him the list I realized . . . I had lost my cell phone. I excused myself and said I would be right back. I found my phone wedged between two chairs in the waiting area. I went back to my exam room, but no one was there. I decided to save some time and changed into a gown.
And then I waited. At 3:55 I got dressed again, went into the hallway and said I had to go to my radiation appointment. The nurse said to wait a second and ducked into another exam room. She came right back out and said Dr. Duvic would be with me in 10 minutes. I said that wouldn’t work, but I did very much want to see Dr. Duvic and would someone please call me on my cell phone and let me know what was going on.
I set off for radiation. For anyone who has been down here, I was on 9th floor rose zone and needed to get to first floor green zone. My feet have been hurting me for about the past two weeks and I had three minutes to get there. And me without my red cape and red and yellow “S” on my chest.
Incredibly, I was only five minutes late. I sat in the waiting room of the precise, runs -like-clock-work radiation department for 25 minutes . When they came to get me, I quickly changed into my yellow paper gowns and laid down on the table for my eye treatment. The tech put the deadening drops in each of my eyes and then asked me to wait.
I waited on the table for about 15 minutes. During that time, the tech would occasionally come on the intercom and tell me it would be just a few more minutes because they were having problems with the computer that controlled the radiation machine.
After someone finally realized that the computer wasn’t going to cooperate, the tech came in and said we would do a Tue/Wed appointment now and she would call me and let me know when my Wed. appointment would be. I gave her my cell phone number and then got dressed.
After I got dressed, I started out towards the waiting room when I realized . . . I didn’t have my cell phone. I went back to my seat in the waiting room where I found the phone. A young man on the other side of the waiting room said, “Sir , I saw your phone there as soon as you left. Wasn’t nobody going to take it.”
Apparently he thought I didn’t hear him or wasn’t reacting appropriately, so he spoke much louder. “Sir. Sir, over here. I was saying, nobody was going to boost your phone. I stayed here to make sure of that.” He did everything except hold out his hand for a tip.
I told him thank you very much and exaggerated my limp as I left down the hallway.
No one ever called me on my cell phone. Maybe they thought it was lost.
Personally, I feel this is worth a face-to-face with Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Rick
6/13/05
If you HAD phoned it in, at least you would have had ONE call on your phone - of course, assuming you had lost it, which, of course you wouldn’t if you HAD called it in. Now, wait a minute - what were we talking about? I think I lost my keyboard.