Not Too Late

1. It is an unusually cold and stormy winter day for San Diego and I am standing in the freezing cold rain sweating profusely. Under my waterproof raincoat, it feels like my body is trapped inside a greenhouse in the middle of summer. My heart is beating so hard I can feel it through my whole body. Under my umbrella, the rain falls around me as I wait for the shuttle to take me home. I had walked a from my class, a mere 100 yards away and yet my body felt like it had just completed a marathon.

Over the next few weeks, I started to notice more and more symptoms that I simply attributed to just having come back from studying abroad in Sweden. I would tell myself, that I was sweating because I was used to colder weather in Sweden, I was out of shape because I had not exercised much when I was abroad, I was tired and forgetful because I was stressed out, etc, the list went on. Unexplainable hand tremors eventually prevented me from volunteering as a dental assistant at UCSD’s Pre-dental student run free clinics and began to fall behind in school. As obvious as it may seem in retrospect, that something was not right, I continued to tell myself everything was fine.

Everything changed one weekend when I flew home to visit my family. At the airport my mother was taken aback by my apparent obvious change in appearance and demeanor. Even with her concern, I continued to brush it off, saying I was fine. That evening, as an old episode of “Friends” played out across the screen of our TV, I settled down on our couch with my mother to relax. Leaning my head back I heard her gasp, “What is wrong with you neck?!” My hand immediately flew to my neck, and as I gulped down my breath, I felt the literal lump protruding from my throat.

2. My eyes flew open as I was jolted awake by the sound of a gurgled cough. As I came to, my eyes met the angry glare of my father sitting across from me. I glanced down apologetically and mumbled a “sorry” through my facemask. Had I really just fallen asleep holding the suction straw in the patient’s mouth? Yes, yes I did. But could you really blame me?

Summer is supposed to be a time for students to be carefree. I wanted to be lying on the deck next to a cool glistening pool, soaking up the sun’s radiating beams. Quite on the contrary, my father enlisted me to assist him at his dental office, 5 days a week, for the next month. This meant waking up at 6 am and sitting in the Bay Bridge commute traffic. It meant sitting under blaring fluorescent overhead lights for 9 hours listening to San Francisco’s local “smooth jazz” station hunched over patients. Instead of the smell of sunscreen and chlorine, my days were filled with the smell of cleaning solution and minty toothpaste. My hand dried out more and more with each new pair of powdered latex gloves I put on and all I could think about was the smell of a cool ocean breeze and I inhaled the stale moist air from within my facemask. This was the price I had to pay in order to save up some money before college.

I told myself that over and over again as I forced my eyelids open, concentrating on avoiding eye contact with my father and the slightly disgusting task of suctioning saliva from the patient’s mouth.