No Pause Button
By the time I closed the car door, the visit was technically over.
The seatbelt clicked into place. The engine stayed off. My hands rested on the steering wheel longer than they needed to. I could still feel the scratchy gown on my skin, the way it never quite covers you no matter how carefully you pull it closed.
I’m thinking about that appointment again because I’m supposed to go back this month.
One year later. A follow-up. Routine, technically. That word again. My brain understands it. My body doesn’t really respond to it the same way.
I didn’t expect the last visit to stay with me like this. Not because anything catastrophic happened on paper. I wasn’t given bad news in that room. No one said anything alarming out loud.
But physically, it was not nothing.
The biopsy was debilitating. It was painful in a way I hadn’t been prepared for. By the time I left the office, I could barely drive myself home. I cried the entire way, partly from the pain, partly from the shock of how different the experience was from how it had been described. Walking was hard for the next couple of days. Everything hurt.
In the office, it had been framed as simple. Quick. Manageable. Something routine enough to fit into the middle of a regular appointment. That framing stayed with me, because my body experienced something else entirely.
Sitting in the car afterward, engine off, hands on the steering wheel, I felt disoriented. Not just physically, but emotionally. Like I had been told one story and lived another.
Someone should have been with me.
That thought landed hard and didn’t leave.
Not because I needed rescuing. But because this wasn’t minor. It wasn’t something I should have had to drive myself home from, or process alone, or push through quietly while in pain.
The appointment itself wasn’t supposed to be a big thing. It was scheduled as routine. An office visit. A check-in. The kind of thing you don’t emotionally prepare for.
The biopsy wasn’t part of the plan.
It came up in the middle of the visit, almost casually. Something we could do now. Something that would save time. Something that made sense. It felt optional in theory, but in practice it already felt decided.
So I nodded.
I listened.
I said okay.
I didn’t ask what waiting would mean. I didn’t ask if same-day meant they were more concerned than they were saying out loud. I didn’t ask the question that was sitting very clearly in my chest.
Does this mean you’re worried about cancer?
I can see now that there were moments where I could have asked. Small pauses. Openings. But the room kept moving, and I moved with it. I didn’t want to interrupt. I didn’t want to slow things down. I didn’t want to seem dramatic or unprepared.
I told myself I was being flexible. That this was proactive. That same-day meant efficient, not alarming. I told myself that if it were serious, someone would say so directly.
I told myself I was fine.
I wasn’t.
The room was cold. I was alone. I hadn’t come prepared for pain or invasiveness or decisions that needed more than a few seconds of thought. I hadn’t brought anyone with me because, until a few minutes earlier, there hadn’t been a reason to.
I work in healthcare. I understand how these decisions get made. I know how timing, access, and efficiency shape what gets offered and how. I know that acting quickly can sometimes be the right call.
But knowing all of that didn’t help me feel grounded.
In that room, I wasn’t empowered or confident or clear. I was just trying to keep up.
Once the biopsy started, everything felt locked in. You don’t interrupt once something is already happening. You don’t reassess. You assume that if there were other options, medication, waiting, support, someone would have mentioned them already.
No one did.
Later, when the pain settled into something deeper and heavier, I still thanked everyone. I still acted like I was fine. I still drove myself home when I probably shouldn’t have.
That’s when my brain really got going.
Could I have waited?
Should I have waited?
Could I have asked for something for the pain?
Could I have come back another day with someone with me?
Did the urgency mean something they weren’t saying?
It’s frustrating how clear everything feels afterward. I suddenly know exactly what I would have said. Exactly how calm and reasonable I would have sounded.
In hindsight, I’m very articulate.
In the moment, I wasn’t.
What surprised me most later was how angry I felt. Not at the provider. Not at the system.
At myself.
Which usually tells me I didn’t feel like I had a real choice, even if technically I did.
Sitting there in pain that was worse than when I arrived, I started noticing how automatic it is for me to be agreeable instead of protected. I didn’t stay quiet because I didn’t have questions. I stayed quiet because everything moved faster than my fear could organize itself into words.
Staying quiet felt easier than slowing the room down. Easier than saying I wasn’t ready. Easier than asking for more time.
In the moment, that silence felt like being capable. Like being mature.
Later, it felt like I had left myself behind.
What I keep thinking about now, especially with another appointment coming up, is how much this assumes a level of fluency most people don’t have. I know how healthcare rooms work, and even I lost my footing. I keep wondering how someone without that background is supposed to know what’s optional, what’s urgent, what questions even exist.
I don’t know how you’re meant to learn that in real time. In a gown. In pain. Alone. With the room already moving forward.
That thought stays with me.
After a while, once the adrenaline wore off and the pain was more manageable, I did ask. Not bravely. Not eloquently. I just said I hadn’t understood everything in the moment. That I hadn’t known what my options were. That fear got there before my voice did.
Nothing bad happened.
No one made me feel foolish. No one implied I should have known better.
And the relief I felt wasn’t really about the answers. It was about realizing I could still speak up, even after the fact.
I think that’s why this is coming back to me now. Because I’m about to go back. Because my body remembers what my brain would rather keep filed away. Because I want to walk into the next appointment differently.
Not louder.
Not confrontational.
Just more present.
I don’t think the point is that acting quickly is always wrong. Sometimes it’s necessary. Sometimes it’s the right thing.
I just know that this time, I want to stay with myself a little longer. I want to slow the room down if I need to. I want to ask the questions before my body has to carry them for me.
I don’t always remember to do that in real time.
But I’m paying attention now.
