COME ON DOC - MY CHEMO CLOCK IS TICKING!

[Susan Beausang]

Do you ever contemplate the amount of time you spend doing mundane things in your life? Did you know that the average 69-yr-old American will have spent 120 full days waiting at red lights (8 minutes per day, 6x per week, 52 weeks/yr for 69 years = 41.6 hours per year).   Some of us spend an estimated year of our life just looking for misplaced objects, or eight months of our life opening junk mail, or two years trying to return phone calls.  Statistics are just numbers, but if you think about your day and some of the unavoidable mundane things that consume your time, the clock does seem to be ticking away on a slot of wasted time.

Now think about the time spent waiting for doctors appointments. Delays in medical appointments are sometimes understandable.  Imagine trying to muster your patience and understanding as you watch the minutes or even hours go by in the doc’s waiting room when you are a person who is battling a life threatening disease.  How does spending your time mundanely feel then?  Is living each day as if it were your last all it’s cracked up to be? Ahhhh, the joy of doctor’s waiting rooms…

One of my beaudiva’s stopped in our office yesterday (looking very chic in her beaubeau) and shared a recent experience she had at her chemo center. She was in line with other patients waiting to receive her treatment. She looked around in wonderment at being “in-line” (feeling like she was in a grocery store line), awaiting her turn to get her dose of lifesaving drugs. She said she found it “surreal.”

What do you think your doctor would say if the next time you were made to wait for an office visit or treatment you commented “Doctor, at this rate - I will have spent 2, 3, 6 months (or x years!?) of my life in your waiting room.”  I’d like to think my doctor would at least update her magazine collection.  What about yours?

Susan Beausang

President, 4Women.com