We were summoned to see the haematologist, not an oncologist. Lymphoma is classified as a blood cancer. That made us feel it could just be masquerading as a malignancy. That it’s less serious, less of a cancer. Is this just the different ‘label’ or that the GP had planted in our psyche, that this NHL was a good cancer to have. Is it just that we are choosing to believe that this a fake cancer?
The day comes round to see the consultant. We are greeted at the hospital atrium by two people at a trestle table. Hand gel is promoted, masks are required and then the persons ask where we are going. We tell them and they decide I can’t accompany husband. We show them the letter which states I am expected to be there. They are adamant. Then my strong, unemotional husband grabs my hand and tells them he is not going anywhere without me. They make a phone call and I am ‘permitted’ to go up to the clinic with him, and we sit there, and sit there. No one else waiting, chairs all socially distanced. The whole hospital is like this. An environment which is usually busy and buzzing is virtually deserted. Areas which usually have a strange mixture of seating, all pushed up together, peopled with an assortment of humanity is now silent. The chairs solitary and only a couple of lonely attendees waiting, waiting for something, someone to acknowledge their existence. The usual sense of urgency has dissipated.
Just as we were giving thanks for the fact that parking charges were no longer in effect a small lady appeared before us and indicated that we should follow her. What is the protocol? We can’t get too close and we mustn’t pass too close to others. We mustn’t lose sight of her though. I felt as if I was participating in Alice in Wonderland and I was trying to keep up with the white rabbit, or was it the Queen of Hearts and she would suddenly shout ‘Off with his head’? Then we had manoeuvred into a room and were sitting staring at a pair of eyes. My headmistress, a nun, said to me that the eyes are the windows to the soul. I looked into this doctor’s eyes and I saw her soul, or I saw something that told me we were not about to discuss a fake cancer.
A Midwife's Muse 
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