Two high stakes trips to two different hospitals over two days. Middlemore yesterday, Auckland today. 

The possibility of front teeth after 14 months without. The prospect of another cancer because something showed up on a scan. 

Clogged motorways and canceled buses – this early bird late for two appointments one after the other. 

Learning to change lanes in almost stationary traffic, walking up from the Viaduct to Auckland Hospital with a total stranger on a similar mission when buses and Ubers let us down.

That was yesterday and today for me. I drove to Middlemore yesterday and the traffic was horrendous. One hour 45 on the way back. A long day of having a denture fitting and then having to go away and come back as it was adjusted. 

I found a nice little spot on a concrete block wall under a tree where I had a coffee during my first wait and a frappe during the second. Pity it was also a smokers’ hangout. Why are people smoking again?

Prosthodontist didn’t want me to go home without anything yesterday so he worked on my teeth between appointments (waiting for glue to dry) and we got there by 4 pm just in time for me to hit some of the heaviest traffic on the very day schools went back after a flood-affected delay. 

The teeth! The teeth are a work in progress. I’ve still got acrylic on my bottom teeth and the top denture, while it slips in and out very nicely, will take a lot of getting used to. The adjacent teeth need a bit of touching up to make them match the two front ones. Can’t eat or drink with them in but I can speak, albeit with a great effort. 

Hanging over all of this was a phone call I received on Friday. The results of my scan on 23 January showed an area of swelling in the region where I used to bite my lip. 

Was it cancer?  “I don’t believe so,” said the surgeon. But he needed to check it on Wednesday – which is today.  

I’m proud of how I coped over the weekend with that scan result. I’m so used to false alarms and real recurrences that I seem to have developed a mental muscle to cope with the fear – although it is lurking like a shadow in the background. 

But I wasn’t going to drive into Auckland City Hospital today when it is easily accessible by two buses. I wasn’t going to add an unnecessary car to the chaos on the Northern and Southern Motorways. 

So I drove to nearby Silverdale, got an express bus to town, got off at the Viaduct where a Remuera bus that goes past the hospital usually tootles along. No sign of the bus and the next one was canceled. 

A flustered younger woman, who wanted to get to the med school opposite the hospital and whose Bayswater ferry had been canceled, conferred with me. We decided to get an Uber but no go. We decided to walk but wasted time trying to hitch a ride in a taxi part way up the hill. It turned out that she was from Chile, was a doctor and working in research.  

We walked flat out. We were both worried but there was fellowship in that. I hate being late and there was something pressing that she had to get to the med school for. With my new dental plate making it hard to talk and with her having some residual difficulties with English, communication was a bit tricky! 

When I got to the hospital clinic the surgeon growled at me for rushing. There was no need! 

Fortunately nothing was seen to be wrong in the area where the scan indicated swelling. He’ll look at it again in a couple of months with the bottom prosthesis unscrewed and his MDM team will look at the scan together on Friday. He showed me the images. My mouth looked like a battlefield but yes there was a whitish blur around the area of my previously bitten lip. 

That’s as good as it gets for me. And a relief because it was exquisite irony to have even a hint of cancer recurrence just before being given my long awaited teeth. 

The long and short of it is that I can now enjoy my teeth. I can practise with them. I can smile. 

I can step out of that great river of cars and buses for a little while that took me so awkwardly to my appointments.