Bedside Manner

I remember the tile first. Cold, beige, institutional. The kind of tile that smells like disinfectant and despair even when freshly mopped. I sat in a chair meant for someone more comfortable with waiting. There was a clock, loud and unbothered, and a ficus plant suffering quietly in a too-small pot. The only noise was Little House on the Prairie playing on a loop like some kind of pioneer-themed psychological torture. Like we’re all supposed to believe in prairie values while we wait to be told how aggressively our bodies are betraying us. Mary’s gone blind. Pa’s lost the farm. Your colon’s turned on you. Stay tuned.

Eventually, they called my name. Which always feels weird. Like, “Hey, wanna come back and find out how your life is about to change forever?” Sure! Sounds fun! 

Abnegation comes easy in rooms like these. Nothing in the exam room had sharp edges. Not the furniture. Not the light. Not even the truth. There was a desk. A doctor's stool. A computer screen angled permanently away from me, as if what was happening in my body was confidential even to me. Four chairs. 

There were tissues on the desk. I used them. Quietly. Efficiently. Like someone who’s cried in a lot of public places and doesn’t want to ruin her mascara. (There is no good mascara for cancer. No one tells you that.)

I sat on my hands. I don’t know why. Maybe to keep them from doing something embarrassing, like begging.

The oncologist walked in like he was already late for something. Clipboard. Monotone. No eye contact. Like if he didn’t see me, I couldn’t ruin his day with my inconvenient humanity. He began to speak with no throat-clearing preamble. He sounded like the trombone from Peanuts. 

“Wah wah standard of care wah wah chemotherapy. FOLFOX or FOLFIRI we’ll want you on 6-12 rounds of chemo and radiation to start and then after that we’ll re-assess.” He never once said cancer. He never said your cancer. He never turned the screen to show me the scan, never said Here’s the thing that wants to kill you, and here’s how we’re going to try to stop it.

No explanation. No map. Just a plan. Already drawn up. Like I was the next stop on a factory line. I had a treatment plan before I had a diagnosis I understood.

So I asked.
“What stage is it?”

He blinked, mildly annoyed. “Stage three,” he said, as if I’d asked the square footage of the exam room. As if I’d interrupted something more important–his own internal monologue about golf, or where to order lunch, or who knows what oncologists think about when they’re not telling women that their bodies are not doing what they’re supposed to do.

Stage three. Like a performance. Like an act. Like a middle chapter I hadn’t agreed to be written into.

I floated.

Not metaphorically. Not poetically. I left my body in the same way you leave a room you suddenly realize you never belonged in. I watched myself nod, polite. Like a woman in a hair salon pretending to understand what “long layers” really means.

He continued. But what came next was not a conversation, but a  monologue in medical Latin, delivered by a man who’s never had to sit on the other side of his own voice. 

“The tumor has grown into the muscle layer of the colon wall, It’s already spread to nearby lymph nodes. There are some nodes on your lungs we’d like to biopsy to rule out whether or not it has metastasized or not.”

I thought about the list of questions I had typed up. The ones sitting in my big white CANCER binder on the chair beside me, while my Oncologist mumbled something to the sullen third-year scribbling my doom for extra credit before droning on about sending me to Salt Lake City for a partial and full colectomy.

While his voice filled the room, I quietly left it. It wasn’t shock. It was something colder. Cleaner. Like my mind pressed the emergency exit button and left my body to finish the appointment alone. My body without me in it smiled, and nodded, because God forbid a women be difficult while dying.

And because I was already somewhere else, I didn’t ask the questions I should have:

• How long do I have? 

• Can we starve it out?

• What else besides chemo do you recommend?

• Will I lose my hair?

• Can I ever have anal sex?

• Will I survive this?

When he was done he shuffled out the same way he entered. And I was handed a business card from third-year as she asked if I had any questions. 

“If I think of any, I’ll let you know.” I offered.

It was over in six minutes. My future, redacted in under ten. That’s what they call bedside manners now. A nod. A handout you need to ChatGPT to decipher at home. And a door that doesn’t close gently enough.

No palliative metaphors. 

No soft landings. 

Just the reality that your entire life can be upended in a beige room under flickering fluorescent lights—delivered like a weather report by someone who won’t remember your name—and no one, no one, is coming to catch you. You don’t fall. You drop. And then you drive yourself home.

A blog post by Rachel Smak on grief, loss, and lessons from stage 3C rectal cancer