• Mood: energetic

Ping ping PING!!!

This is about my day today. Those of you who are squeamish probably won't be grossed out by this, so go ahead and read.

In preparation for today, I rented "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" for dimakoi, since it seemed she'd be waiting for me for 3-4 hours. Unfortunately, dimakoi forgot her headphones and took over an hour to get a pair from the nearby Fry's, thus missing an hour of viewing time.

As I was being prepped, the nurse told me they'd be using the same drug "cocktail" they used on me five years ago -- Demerol and Versed. The latter is a Valium derivative that's supposed to cause temporary amnesia. Valium relaxes most folks, but in my case it hits like really strong coffee. I knew my recovery was going to be faster if I let them use it, so I told them to use it. Besides, I didn't have any amnesia the last time they used it!

I was prepped with the IV. The doctor came and talked to me. Then they started the sedatives. I unfortunately didn't get to see the video screen, as my head was turned away from the monitor. I made a few wisecracks about not getting to see "the Probe channel" and had folks cracking up. The doctor was very gentle with both parts of the test. Somewhere in there he removed a polyp from my stomach. I didn't get the dimensions. I slept through portions of the test because I was T-I-R-E-D.

Afterwards my recovery was frighteningly quick. Because I had more Demerol than last time (I had a splitting headache and a longer procedure), The nurse was insisting I go straight home and eat there. As soon as we got to dimakoi's car, I said, "Screw that. If I have to take a vacation day for this, I'm gonna MAKE this a 'vacation day!' California Pizza Kitchen, here we come!"

We gorged ourselves "family style" on a Barbecue Chicken and Thai Chicken pizza and both ordered dessert. I also had iced tea and an iced cappucino. The Versed had me so wired even the chocolate souffle cake a la mode didn't make me the least bit woozy, so we walked a block and a half to the nearby Apple store to look around and drool at the pretty toys.

By that time it was around 4pm, so we decided it was in our best interest to get me to my 7:30pm appointment in the east bay in leisurely fashion, stopping at stores and such along the way. At one mall we hit a Starbucks for more drinks (I was sensible and had an iced decaf nonfat latte with a sugar-free vanilla shot), looked at stuff in a sporting goods store, hit a pet store (I picked up some goodies for Lady), and went to Walmart so dimakoi could buy more minutes for her cell phone.

Next we finished the drive to Berkeley, stopping for gas, and then for produce at Berkeley Bowl. This store had apparently once been a bowling alley, but now it's a really cool supermarket. This place has really nice organic and non-organic produce, neat grains, and gorgeous fish. I live a bit far to shlep fish home, but I wound up buying Rainier and bing cherries (the latter, organic, for $0.99/lb!), two bunches of purple asparagus, pears (gorgeous and only $0.69/lb), a Korean melon (I wanted to try one), and some red-fleshed and blue-fleshed potatoes. If I were doing more cooking I'd also have picked up some broccolini.

Next dimakoi dropped me off at Dr. Jane's for my bi-weekly appointment. Warren was meeting me there to take me home. Jane told us about the wonderful tim she and Cindy had at Marcon, and I told her a little about Baycon (I was more interested in listening). Warren told us about his testing. They kept asking him questions about what he was like when he was drunk (he doesn't drink) and whether he thought people were "out to get" him. He says he didn't know whether to laugh or be afraid of the stupid questionnaire, and after the fifth or sixth "do you get angry easily when you're drunk" type question he started just leaving them blank.

After Jane's, Warren drove us to IHOP, where he had a BLT and I had blintzes with strawberries (red food with skin and seeds -- yaay!) and an orange-vanilla shake in hopes of knocking myself out. Instead, I wound up taking most of the blintzes home, and I'm only now starting to fade after having taken something to knock me out.

Hopefully I'll find out soon whether the polyp was benign or malignant (and exactly how big it was).