RIVER CITY JOURNAL: WERE THOSE TWO WOMEN IN THE WAITING ROOM REALLY ANGELS?

Just when you think your pain is the worst, along come two women with walkers to set you straight.

Waiting rooms make me grumpy, even when I don't have to wait. I'm not at all patient when I'm waiting, which makes me wonder why folks who wait for doctors are called patients.

(As it turns out, "patient" is a perfect description, if my dictionary can be trusted. The word "patient" has Latin and Greek roots in expressions of suffering. There you are. A patient in a waiting room is either suffering from an affliction or from waiting.)

This week I was at the eye doctor, who is very punctual. But he wanted to dilate my eyes, a procedure I understand helps him give me the very best in visual care. But, as the eye doctor quickly learned, my eyes are not to be touched, and bright lights make me act like a cornered animal. I'm sure when I left, the good doctor said, "Whew! I'm glad we only do that once a year."

So here was an eye doctor poking in my eyes and trying to put drops in them so he could shine a bright light into them. Do you see where this is heading?

Before the doctor could take his strobe light and start piercing my brain, I had to sit in the waiting room for a few minutes while the dilating drops took effect. Don't get me wrong. The doctor was extremely competent and took great pains to minimize my discomfort. But until science comes up with tests that can be performed with my eyes closed and the eye doctor standing 10 feet away, I must continue to endure dilating drops, foreign fingers and bright lights.

You can imagine my disposition as I wandered into the waiting room with fuzzy vision and the start of a stress headache. I grabbed a magazine, even though I couldn't see well enough to read it, and chose a seat between the two women who were patiently waiting.

Both of the women had aluminum walkers next to their chairs. They both smiled hello. They had no clue that I am the world's worst waiting-room conversationalist. Remember the time I took our all-black cat to the vet, where another cat owner tried to strike up a chat by asking the cat's name? "Guess," I replied, having never known an all-black cat anywhere in the world that wasn't named Blackie. "Oh, what a clever name," the woman replied. As you can probably tell, we did not immediately start sharing intimate secrets.

The woman with a walker on my right used the standard conversation opener about the weather and the rainstorm of the previous night. I nodded, so as not to be regarded as a total jerk.

"Boy, when the weather changes, my legs really cramp up," the woman on the right said. "I have MS, you know, and I can predict the weather, that's for sure."

I looked at the woman closely for the first time. Probably past middle age (in other words, my age). Other than the walker, she showed no signs of affliction.

I asked if aching joints when the weather changes is common among people with multiple sclerosis, because I had never heard that from the two people I know with MS.

"Goodness, yes," was her emphatic reply. The woman on my left, possibly the other woman's mother, joined in. "I had surgery on my knees a few year ago, and now the other knee is worse. I sure feel the weather."

Back to the first woman. "It passes. I'm just glad I can walk at all."

Then she gave me the one-minute history of her diagnosis in the late 1980s that she had MS. "They told me I wouldn't be able to walk in six months."

With what I took to be an immense amount of pride, the woman went on. "After I cried for a few weeks, I took the Bible and started paying attention to the lessons Mama had been teaching me all my life. I decided I just wouldn't give in. They told me I would have to give up my job, but I said I'd work as long as the good Lord would let me. I took early retirement nine years later. And I can still get around with my walker."

The woman was smiling. Imagine: MS. Aching joints when it gets cloudy. Using a walker. Happy to be alive.

"Sometimes I get pretty wobbly," the woman said. "I fall down sometimes too. I just get myself up and prop myself in a corner until I get my bearings. Then I take off again. That's what I'll do until I can't do it anymore."

About that time, the eye doctor was ready to see me again. I wanted to stay and listen to this courageous woman. My trivial concerns about eye drops and bright light didn't amount to much any more. I thought about the TV show, "Touched by an Angel." Were these two women with their walkers angels?

By the time my exam was over, the two women were leaving the eye doctor's office.

"Take care of yourself," I said as they headed out the door.

"Oh, don't you worry about me. God's got me in his hands all right. Right, Mama?"

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.