Gratitude

 I’m standing semi-naked in a room without windows and there’s a woman pushing and pulling at my left breast.

“Just relax your shoulders, yes, that’s good’, she says as I lean in to hug a huge white machine. I don’t want to be here, but I’m so grateful to be here. This woman and her machine could save my life.

Every couple of years a letter arrives in the mail, suggesting I attend a free Breast Screen appointment. These letters began arriving when I turned fifty and even during the Covid lockdowns the screenings continued, carried out by tired nurses in large caravans parked outside community centres.

Today the nurse technician seems less tired. As I’m getting dressed she tells me that this is a new machine, and that they wanted to send the old one to East Timor, but didn’t have the funds to ship it. The wastage makes me feel sick. After three trips to Timor Leste, I know only too well how few resources people have over there, how many lives that old machine might have saved.

A week later, at 7 am, I’m following an orange line painted on the floor of a public hospital, looking for the sign that says ‘Surgical Services’. This time I am not the patient. My father needs a surgical procedure. The stakes are high.

We are invited into a small room where a smiling nurse takes his blood pressure and checks his temperature. Filling out the necessary forms she stares at his birth date, shakes her head and says ‘Amazing!’ He’s about to turn 90 but he’s still as sharp as a tack. On request he recites the months of the year - in reverse order. When she leaves the room, he says, ‘Well that’s it then. I’ve lost all control now’. He’s usually the one helping others.

Later that day the nurses on his ward field endless calls from our dad’s seven children and stepchildren. They are endlessly patient and reassuring. He’s doing well. We’ll let him know you called. This is his second surgical procedure here in a month. It’s all free.

Luck. Sometimes you don’t know you have it until you think it might run out.