Skinny Boy ✔

Chapter 34: be dark night

I don't like doctors offices. Needless to say, I was uncomfortable being in one, especially with a searing pain aching through my shoulder every time I moved my arm in the slightest. I shifted uncomfortable, the paper sheet covering the examination table crinkling beneath me. 

Those little things they have to check before the doctor comes in--blood pressure, weight, height--are only excuses allowing me more time to panic. I swear, they do those things to make you more nervous. 

At long last, the doctor tapped on the door before entering, but he didn't bother waiting for an answer before walking in. 

Well what's the point of knocking if you don't give us time to answer?

"Hello," he greeted, squirting a sprig of hand sanitizer in his palm. "How's it going today?" 

I rolled my eyes, in too much pain to deal with his polite bullshit. Mom answered for me, instead, returning the polite question back. Thanks, mom. 

"So," the doctor said, typing at the speed of light to pull up a file on the computer. He strains to read the words on the screen. The glasses perched on his nose were evidently not enough help. "I hear that you've injured your shoulder." 

"No, I've got explosive diarrhea," I said sarcastically. I didn't understand why they had to run through the same questions the nurse already asked. Don't they down the answers? 

"Nathan," my mother warned. 

The doctor didn't seem offended in the slightest. He must have been adapted to patients who expressed their pain through anger, as he cracked a smile at the remark, even joking back. "Well in that case, we might need to perform a colonoscopy." 

I rolled my eyes again, trying my best not to smile. 

Touche. 

"Which shoulder?" I pointed to it, and he took a look at it, feeling around and asking does this hurt? over and over again. It all hurts, you idiot, so stop squeezing! was what I wanted to shout at him. But I bit my tongue for the time being. 

He brought my arm up above my head, and told me to keep it there. As soon as he let go, however, it dropped back down. My arm was basically limp, refusing to lift off to the side. He asked me to move it in a way other ways, and almost every time, I heard a nasty clicking sound. He then probed me with questions about how long it's been hurting and all those fun questions. When asked about my usual workout routine, I lied and said that I hadn't worked on my arms until that day, and that I'd been resting it the very moment it began to hurt. 

After the painful examination and a few curses almost slipping under my breath, he looked at me and my mom and gave his conclusion. "It seems he's torn his rotator cuff."

"What does that mean?" I asked. A tear in anything didn't sound good, let alone a tear in something I wasn't all that familiar with. But I was more concerned about what it meant in terms of my workouts than I was concerned about its severity. "Can it be fixed?" 

"I don't know for sure if that's the problem, but it seems to be the most plausible explanation. We'll have to do some imaging first to make sure, and then figure out from there what we can do to help," he smiled at me. 

I hated that cheesy smile. How can you smile when you're giving me bad news? Do you also smile when you tell patients they have cancer? Sicko. 

~

After some tests and an extremely long wait in several different rooms, we were at long last given the news that he was right: my rotator cuff was torn. I didn't realize there was a part of me hoping he was wrong, and that it was nothing to fuss over, until that hope was lost.