A woman enters the consultation room. She can hardly walk, as if something is stuck between her legs. She has a hard time explaining what is wrong, but it is certainly “down there.”
The doctors asks her to undress, but she hesitates. In the end, she climbs over the invisible steeple only she is seeing, and undresses anyway. And what is revealed is nothing less than grotesque. Her uterus is hanging between her legs, and it is black. Eroded and necrotized. Only a bit smelly, but there must have been a time where the stench was worse.
The doctor asks since when this has happened (and she is afraid for the answer).
Again the woman hesitates, and has a hard time finding her words.
“Three years.”
The doctor does not know what to say. (Three years ? Three years of sitting on this thing. Of going to the bathroom with this thing. Of walking and talking with this thing. Of sleeping with this thing. And didn’t her husband say anything about this ? It’s almost absurd.)
This patient will be helped though. Her uterus will be removed, and her problem will be solved.
But some patients enter the consultation room with a much more serious problem. With pain, or with a lump. And they knew about it for more than half a year, or even longer. And the cancer turns out to have reached its final stage, and nothing can be done anymore. The patient will succumb, whatever will be done.
Because she did the worst thing you can do in the medical context —
She procrastinated.
Leave a Reply