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  • Start with Desire
  • Ann Ryles (bio)

Dr. Jerome Predicts

Dr. Jerome is my oncologist and I check in with him every three months now that my treatment is over. If you’re like most people you probably hope you never have to meet an oncologist in your life, certainly not for medical reasons and maybe not ever, not even at your kid’s soccer game or your neighbors’ Fourth of July barbecue. Dr. Jerome has told me himself that his job is a surefire conversation halter at parties. He tells people what he does and they think, How can you do that? And that’s without him even mentioning he’s a pediatric oncologist, which is doomsday for sure.

But let me just say if you do have to meet an oncologist, by chance or by destiny, I highly recommend Dr. Jerome. You might conceive of pediatric oncology as a terrifically depressing field and assume that Dr. Jerome is a morose and macabre man, two words I’ll confess I knew well before SAT prep as someone who is a certifiable word nerd and, in case you’re wondering, has also tested negative for Asperger’s multiple times. (I may be eccentric and somewhat socially inept and prone to digression, but I’m not on the spectrum.) I can assure you that Dr. Jerome is neither morose nor macabre.

He wears ties decorated with Dr. Seuss illustrations and keeps a collection of kaleidoscopes in his office that he encourages patients to freely sample. You can even take one home with you if you like. I asked him once what the deal was with the kaleidoscopes.

“They remind me of what I do,” he said.

“How’s that?”

“Adrian?” he said, seeming surprised I didn’t know why. He leaned way back in his desk chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “Because it’s my job to make sure the pieces fall into place for each one of my patients.” By pieces I knew he meant surgery, chemo, radiation, and all the other miscellaneous meds in his arsenal, pain killers, nausea reducers, and so on. He reached to the windowsill behind him and picked up a kaleidoscope with a long wooden shaft, peering into the view hole and rotating the wheel. I imagined colored fragments shifting in patterns inside. A small prism of rainbow stripes appeared on the wall from the sun reflecting off the glass end of the tube. [End Page 9]

“Never the same thing twice,” he said. “Endless variation.” (Actually, I was sure that wasn’t technically true, but I knew Dr. Jerome was speaking figuratively so I held my tongue. I didn’t want to tarnish his kaleidoscope metaphor with the intrusion of mathematical reality.)

Besides the Seuss-themed ties and kaleidoscopes, in his reception area there’s a red popcorn cart with a silver scoop and wax-coated bags for you to help yourself. I happen to be of the opinion that the smell of fresh popped popcorn is an inherently hopeful aroma, and I think Dr. Jerome is smart to take advantage of it. All in, Dr. Jerome is a very sick dude, and I always look forward to seeing him even though it’s scary for me because of the test results he’s got in the maroon file marked with my name on his desk.

Sick means cool, or awesome, in the event that you are of Dr. Jerome and my parents’ generation and are not up on the current lingo of teens. (FYI: Urban Dictionary is a good online resource for deciphering youthful turns of phrase. I personally have given a thumbs-up to a number of entries on the site. One is chode, which means a penis that’s wider than it is long. This is a put-down that has gained currency in competitive diving, which is my sport. We divers like to come up with insults related to the shape and size of male anatomy because of the Speedos we wear. Everything is on display in a Speedo, so digs about one another’s protuberances are something we do to relieve the tension arising from the embarrassment...

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