“Living With Cancer: Hospital City.” By Susan Gubar, The New York Times Well Blog.
When you travel to cancer central, you may find yourself more perplexed by the currency, language, customs, costumes, cuisine and time zone than you would have been if you had landed in Timbuktu. In Hospital City, you can lose your way as well as your confidence in everything you took for granted.
Neither passports nor tickets need to be found — just insurance cards — while lining up for registration, where it is impossible not to worry about incalculable costs. And what about those without cards? The spacious reception area, with its plants and paintings, seems deceptive after patients cross a portal into crowded passageways.
