It’s Friday, and a sweeping breath of calm fills me as I pick good, clean clothes to wear to the hospital. White cotton button-down shirt. Clean jeans with the leg cut out for my cast. A navy blue sweater. I comb my hair, not that it does more than tickle a scalp full of stubby follicles. This is a baptism. Dear Dad, I start to dictate in my head. It’s time to learn the truth. We have the thing. That spark, that flare, that tumor that makes us (made, in your case, sorry) grow way too big. This is the day I take my first deliberate steps to getting to the bottom of whatever the hell is wrong with me. I’m on the road to my diagnosis and I can’t wait.
It’s an ungodly early appointment, but I don’t care. Mom’s saying things and they float around me, creating a bolstering cloud of security, because this is it. I’ve googled the snot out of acromegaly. I’m ready to join the parade. The blood test today will look for an overactive hormone and I’ve already checked nearly everything off the list. Enlarged hands and feet? Yup. Everything is enlarged, it all counts. Coarsened facial features? You bet. A deepened, husky voice? You’ve been listening in, haven’t you, you sly devil? There’s other stuff that doesn’t line up with the list from the Mayo Clinic, but there’s enough right there to say oh hell yeah, it’s gigantism. I’ve already signed up for the acromegaly mailing list. I’m ready to be the state of Oregon’s chapter president.
Someday, when I’m being interviewed for Nova or 60 Minutes because I’ll have cured cancer by then, they’ll ask me about my formative years and I’ll say what a shitstorm my life was until I got my diagnosis. And once I was a legit medical giant I was no longer ashamed to tower through the halls. I had a genetic ailment that no one could take away from me. My pituitary gland produced too much growth hormone; it’s not my fault. Perhaps there’s surgery on the horizon for some benign tumors causing trouble, but once they’re gone I am in the clear. I stop growing.
I fasted overnight. I haven’t had any breakfast. Let’s do this.
Mom and I get in the car. Back on the road again and we’re off to the hospital. It’s a different room in a wing on the right I’ve never been to. Everything is fresh and new. Even the magazines have better pictures of bikini-clad ladies over here. Doesn’t matter they’re illustrating some weight-loss bullshit; still counts. The lab tech calls me in for the blood draw.
“Why you smiling, baby?” she asks.
“Nothing.” Everything. “How much blood are you taking today?”
“Eight pints.”
“Really?”
“No, you’d be dead.” She laughs. Gotta love phlebotomist humor. “Couple vials, baby, and you’re on your way.”
The needle goes into my vein. Vials are filled. She releases the purple elastic around my bicep, presses a cotton ball against my arm, slaps some paper tape over it, and I’m free.
TWENTY-FOUR
The shelves in bodegas and corner mom-and-pop shops always make me smile. It’s a hodgepodge of stuff they ordered once but didn’t sell, so they let it sit on the shelf with all the other items to turn yellow and fade under the fluorescent lights. I straighten my sports coat and chuckle at one package of generic diapers, next to a pile of wrenches, next to some old travel bottles of shampoo, next to some faded boxes of birthday candles, and a box of off-off-off-off-brand teeth whitening strips left to die next to two bags of Acme kitty litter.
It reminds me of my head. A pile of random shit crammed together. I almost want to buy the teeth whitening kit just to bring it home and give it a proper burial. Maybe I’ll add it to my list, which is pretty brief. The only thing on it is Beer.
Two six-packs and a pack of gum from every corner store we go to.
Because I am a bit of a math nerd, I actually looked into how many ounces of beer it would take for someone my size to get drunk, and the answer is a lot. Since we don’t want to be caught, we figured that if we buy two six-packs and some random gum at each store, no flags are raised. If we hit up enough stores, we slide under the radar, secure plenty of suds, and have a lovely long constitutional whilst getting said brews.
Jamie has to wait outside as I browse in my man drag, select beer, and buy it. We already know it works because we stashed a brown paper bag from the last store under a row of scrub bushes, but I’m still sweating like a pig. No one seems to notice. Why would they? We scoured all the closets at both our houses and found usable man things. Thankfully her dad is real tall and doesn’t seem to be missing his scratchy brown-plaid sports coat. Jamie and I worked up my everything real good before we left. Gave the coat some Professor Huffinblad patches on the elbows that her mom had been meaning to add forever but never got around to, and with my wire frame glasses to boot, it’s all complete. Jamie swiped them from her grandpa, and as long as I sink them down the bridge of my nose and look over the top, my eyes don’t kill too much. She said that was a perfect touch because it makes me look like I need bifocals and I’m too stubborn to get them. Good for the age range we were going for.
In addition to the khaki pants and the respectable socks and loafers, she sliced a rigid line through my hair with a fine-tooth comb and parted it to the side. Flecked with scattered gray hairs at the temples that she individually painted. Put together, but not too much. Casual. I look like a banker approving a loan for a pot farm.