“So are you going stick with Union Memorial?”
Our friend Jules asked us this the evening after they found the tumor. She’s a doctor at Johns Hopkins. Her husband Leslie is a bio-statistician at Hopkins. We hadn’t had a chance to think too much about it yet, but we would obviously going to Hopkins as at least a second opinion. We quickly set up an appointment at Hopkins for early the next week, but kept the CT scan appointment at Union for Friday.
I spent Friday morning drinking Crystal Light spiked with radium dye. The snow started that afternoon and didn’t stop until Saturday evening. The totals varied by area, but I’d estimate we got 28 inches.
We were finally able to leave the house Saturday as the sun was going down. Up on the Avenue, we met newly-installed Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake after she did a TV interview as a phalanx of snow plows rumbled behind her. A nice piece of political theater, our friend Kathy noted.
We managed to dig out the cars and collaborated with the neighbors on doing the alley. Lisa needed to get to work and we both needed to make the Tuesday meeting at Hopkins. Side streets never saw a plow and main streets were down to a single lanes. Getting anywhere took twice as long. People unaccustomed to the logistics of snow removal were making me stabby by shoveling snow into the street and alley or moving snow into a place where it they’d have to shovel it again. Amateurs.
Over the weekend, Lisa and I had decided that we were going with Hopkins. The people at Union were nice and probably very capable, but Hopkins is, well, Hopkins. If I really did have cancer, then duh: Hopkins. I’ll go off-brand for things like dishsoap, Swiffer pads, and trashbags, but a tumor in my colon. Hopkins.