Dance Me To The End

A year ago I went to a doctor
A referral to figure out pain
My heart or stomach cancer or a cyst in my spine?
Or if the neurologist could help figure it out.

Within my two sentences he said,
"You are a dog. If you were a dog
We would give you Prozac."
This followed some trajectory for him.

I'm fatter now and in pain.
Want a few answers, some idea
Of why the syrnix causes such debilitating issues
How to distinguish it from my intestinal cancer.

It's a bit odd to have to bark and fetch
Whoof and shake my tail
In order to deal with a medical
Examination gone wrong.

One in which I am also informed he is
"Not my father" or not really, "Paid to care"
As if I would ever have the illusion I was
Paying some neurologist to "care"

I'd prefer to pay ten dollars
And buy a bag of peanut butter patties from See's
You'd get something worth sharing
With the ladies on the bus.

This the same doctor that took my drivers license
Four years earlier when I was passing out
Referred after a hysterectomy
When I noted repeat fainting and the surgeon

Was in follow up two weeks home, "Too busy to see me then."
His nurse saying , "It sounds neurological."
Sure after a hysterectomy fever and fainting
Always sounds neurological to me too.

Went on, in a week, to a month's hospitalization
I was fainting from the infections
Through my entire abdominal cavity
"Missed" by the men of science who were definitely not looking.

6 months without driving, recovering from the Demerol
Pumped in IV into my arm, head then trapped
In a hospital stay from hell that destroyed life for many days
When the cancer in my intestine was also "missed"

Returned to work, through these four years, always worked
One year of which I had to wait to get that license due to
Seizures the Demerol triggered, so walks, buses, rides
And now having that botched hysterectomy....

Several cancer surgeries, scans, tests, pills, pains
Weekly infusions, full time job teaching, kids to try to love
Years of severe anemia, often no care for it, transfusions,
A spinal problem escalated through this, untreated

A life of peritonitis and gastric bleeds
From a GIST tumor that caused immense infiltrations of an artery
Then catastrophic bleeding and chaos, confusion
With lovely, lovely issues in a heart damaged long past by attack

I wanted then to be thought of as
A fat dog that was lolling around
Waiting for a neurological egomaniac to
Throw me a bone and tell me what to expect

From my expanding syrnix, how fair he was.
But for all of that as hard as it is, as revealing to me about life
To hold in my middle aged and "needing someone to listen"
Self, having another doctor, one I thought of with love

Take "the dog" and turn it again
Into myself, into my eyes wide open
Looking at the scrolling page and reading
Something written in such cold blood

Mine.
Convinces me that
I am less a dog now than I ever was
A year ago.