Gratitude...

Sitting in the waiting room of the Mayo Clinic's urology department makes me grateful.

There's the usual assortment of people with medical problems you might find in any waiting room. But, this is not just any waiting room. It's finely appointed with comfortable furniture and high windowed walls of streaming sunlight to make waiting actually pleasurable. There's the low level chatter of the people and the occasional worker who goes arouNd gently calling out names for appointments. There's even an elderly woman who walks from chair the chair and makes you thnk she is dusting the furniture when actually she's smiling and chatting and answering questions and directing people around...a clinic hostess disguised as a gadfly.

But, despite all this stimulation, you eventually get down to the reasons people are here. Whether retirees clutching valuable medical records or businessmen frantically typing away on laptops, each person here is waiting for the latest news about an illness so severe that it brings them to this waiting room of the nation's most prestigious hospital. They have walkers and wheelchairs, crutches and colostomy bags. Some have anxious faces and others look strangely serene. But all of them have an air of anticipation broken only by the sudden relief of having their name called to see their doctor who will treat them.

I too have reason to be here and use my worry time to write in this blog. I look around me at the kerchiefed heads hiding the baldness of radiation treatment and the legs straightened by braces and the People in wheelchairs and give thanks to my higher power I can walk into the examining room, sit in a chair,and hear and speak to my doctor. My case, so far, is not that bad. But I am incredibly grateful for having the chance to be here among these survivors of disease in such a wonderful place.

We hope for the best, and an addendum to this entry will obviously come when the test results are known. Until then, I am thankful.

All the best, Roger W.