The Mellen Center Gong Show

I am sitting in the waiting area of the Cleveland Clinic's Mellen Center. I am facing the wall, focusing on a painting made by someone named Marvin. It is very green. It has a goldfish/coy pond with waterlilies and lily pads in the water and a few calla lilies painted in the grass that surrounds the pond and it is huge.

There is a man behind me, talking on a cell phone, speaking a language I don't understand. Occasionally there is a "gong" noise. Maybe it is the elevator, or an alert for the automatic doors, because when building a center for MS patients, you have to assume the doors will need to be automatic. The noise reminds me of the clanging of the gong in the old television game show, The Gong Show. I imagine that as patients are filing through this MS center, some are being GONGED! "Nope, sorry, nothing we can do for you. "Bang the gong Chuck" , and an old and feeble Chuck Barris waddles his way to the gong and swings with all his might. I really hope I don't get GONGED!

I refuse to look around me. I will only focus on Marvin's painting. If I look around, I fear I will see things I can never take back out of my head. Wheelchairs, canes...I just can't think about those right now. There are days when I already have to force myself to get out of the bed. I don't really need the images of people in wheelchairs, a community of people afflicted with MS, haunting my waking moments.

There is a man who keeps hacking and coughing. I don't think he himself is an MS patient. I think he is with someone else. Good grief, there is an entire empty section of waiting area. Why must he bring his hacking within a few feet of us. I am trying to stay healthy here!!!

I'll be glad when this is over with. I know I need to be here but I don't want to be. I don't really want to hear one more person tell me that I have MS.

I want a do-over, a Mulligan. I want to go back. I don't want to be this person. I'm simply not very fond of the me that I am right now.