Monday, March 31, 2008

And They Call It: Poopy Love...

So, Mr. Z has this huge crush on a girl in his class and, from the sounds of it, she kinda digs him, too. Which is great... and fucked up. The boy's nine, for fuck's sake. And since he skipped a grade, she's older -- 11 to be exact. Total Susan Sarandon/Tim Robbins thing going on.

Anywhich, each day, he comes home with more "evidence" that she's into him. Sometimes he catches her staring at him, she compliments him on his work in art class, she gave him a root beer lollipop at Family "Fun" night. Sometimes the evidence seems a little scant, but when taken all together, I think he's on to something.

Tonight, while we were chatting at bedtime, I accidentally unleashed a heinous fart. With an accent on the "einous." As he was tearing up and gasping for oxygen, we had the following exchange:

ME: Hey, do you think Miss E ever farts?

MR. Z: No way!!! She doesn't do that kinda thing!

ME: Oh, but she does. Remember that book "Everyone Poops"? Well, if everyone poops, then everyone totally farts. Especially Miss E.

MR. Z: [silently pondering this disturbing revelation]

ME: I know it can be sort of strange to think about someone you like farting and pooping. Maybe we should talk about something else...

MR. Z: I'll bet she has flowery, little pink poops.

ME: Okay, I shouldn't have said anything. It's time to go to sle--

MR. Z: And I'll bet she cuts tropical farts that smell like coconuts and bananas.

ME: All right, time to go to sleep, Tommy Bahama! You can dream about her tropical gassers all you want, but I don't want to talk about it anymore.

MR. Z: You started it!

ME: Oh yeah? Well... whoever smelt it, dealt it, okay? Goodnight.

Once again, I think I've managed to somehow invent a brand new fetish and then inadvertently foist it upon my son. Ten years from now, he's so going to be the moderator of the alt.binaries.tropicalflatus newsgroup. I better go lock up all the suntan lotion, just to be safe.

Aloha.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Soon to be Pinching off My Own Troop of Brownies...

My fucking colon is killing me, as it's pretty much impacted to the hilt with about three sleeves of Girl Scout Thin Mints and a half-a-tray of Samoas. The cookies that Miss O sold for her Brownie troop came in this weekend and we've got boxes coming out the ying-yang.



We ordered probably 10 boxes -- a buncha Thin Mints, some Trefoils for the Old Lady, my precious Samoas, some All-Abouts and a coupla Do-Si-Dos. My parents ordered 12 boxes, but at the last minute my mom called and said, "You know, we don't really eat those cookies, so why don't you just keep them." Thanks mom -- I'll name my soon to be prolapsed rectum after you.

Mr. Z created a pretty bitchin' chart of the cookies we have hangin' around, waiting to be et:



If you look closely at the "All Abouts," he changed the cookie text to read "Girlscouts is (not) all about girls." You go, Mr. Z -- Title IX works both ways! My little Norma Rae.

Ow -- cramp! Holy fuck, these cookies are killing me. What are these girls putting in these fuckers? Let's see... partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil... dextrose... carrageenan... Carrageenan?! What the fuck are brownies doing messin' around with carrageenan? Isn't that made by boiling the flayed hides of dead Webelos?

That does it, one more sleeve of Thin Mints and then I'm cutting myself off for the night. And maybe eight more Samoas. And three Tagalongs... but then that's it. And a Do-Si-Do.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Crabppendix...

Well, we're back home. Oh, and nice fucking snowstorm on the way, thank you very much. There's like a coupla goddamn inches of snow on the ground here. I'm not shoveling. Fuck it. Snow is dead to me.

So, yeah, I've been trying to process this whole four-month, snowballing health fuckstravaganza. I still can't quite wrap my puny brain around it. I started in November with some tingling in my fingers and toes, went to see my primary care doc, and four months later, I'm at the fucking Mayo Clinic getting my fat analyzed. Wha-happ'n?!

Don't get me wrong -- I'm fucking thrilled that they didn't find bupkus. I'm also kinda pissed that it seems as if all the testing leading up to it was completely mishandled. Sorry -- misinterpreted. Whatever. Someone, somewhere had his fucking head up his shithole, and I, along with my stomach fat and my bone marrow, paid the price for it. I guess I'm thankful that the clowns in Lansing realized that they were clueless and they bumped me upstairs to the big-boys in Rochester -- I'm just not too jacked about the 10 years of my life I worried away waiting for all the negative results to come dribbling in.

I'll tell you something, though -- I'm through worrying about this kinda shit. All I get for my fretting is loose stools and a hole in my pelvis that still hasn't fucking healed.

Of course, some good came out of it. I realized that, given 24 hours, I can fill up not one, but one and a half giant plastic jugs of steaming, frothy crabby-wee.



Oh, a little tip -- if you think you might need a second jug, don't wait until 7:00 the next morning to go pick it up. Especially if the next morning is a weekend, and the route to the building where you pick the jug up is closed and you have to somehow find an alternate route, without a map, and you've got about 40 gallons of bubbling tinkle that's starting to make your ureters look like a coupla over-filled water balloons, and every corridor you turn down looks exactly like this:



And you end up barely making it to the counter in time, and then you have to find your way BACK through all those corridors as you run-walk back to your room, and barely make it into the bathroom in time and end up blasting a Clydesdale-worthy steaming-stream of winky-tink into said container, creating a sound that's akin to that of a power-washer on full-blast-mode spraying the side of an Airstream trailer. Just an fyi.

I also realized that I've gotta get off my ass and start DOING more shit. Hell, doing SOME shit. I may not be thrilled with this fucking town, but if I don't start getting out and meeting people and getting back on the ol' self-actualization express, I may one day ACTUALLY find myself with some incurable disease and what'll I have to show for it? A piece of fucking shitfuck, that's what. So look out, Okemos -- Crabbydad's venturing OUT-OF-DOORS and he's gonna start DOING some SHIT... so outta my fucking way.

So, yeah, I should be done with all the bellyachin' 'bout my health for awhile -- though I know it has made for some fucking RIVETING reading. I apologize. I'll stop focusing all my crabbiness on my (still) tingling phalanges and get back to focusing it on the spawnage, where it belongs.

How am I going to do this, you ask? Well, for one thing, I'm going to spend a fuck of a lot less time listening to doctors and hanging out on WebMD and MedlinePlus, and a lot more time swimming, making music and hanging out with some new friends I met on our recent visit to Trader Joe's:



As a matter of fact, I think I hear one of my friends calling me right now. If you'll excuse me, I've got an appointment on the Island of Doctor Merlot.

Cheers.

This Just in...

All tests negative.

I don't have it.

We're going home.

Woo-fucking-hoodlie-doo.

More later from the crabbyshack...

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Fat Wednesday...

Well, we're back in Chicago -- I was "dismissed" yesterday morning, after my appointment with the doc. Here's where things stand...

1. The initial protein that the neurologist found in my blood, way the fuck back in January, was, strangely, NOT found in my blood at Mayo. I don't know if it disappeared, was never there in the first place, or if it only shows up in odd-numbered months, but it ain't there now. Apparently, that's a good thing.

B. All the rest of my blood looks clean. Red cells, white cells, Beverly Cells, platelets -- no problems. My heart looks good, my lungs look good, my reflexes look good, and my ass looks good... in jeans, but is a little soupy in khakis.

iii. They don't have the results back from the fat pad aspiration yet -- I'm supposed to call tomorrow at noon to see what's the shizzle. They'll also have the results of this genetic test that determines whether I have the inherited form of this fucker.

Basically, the doc is pretty dubious that I've got amyloidosis. He says my physical exam shows none of the symptoms of someone with it, there's no evidence, so far, in my blood/bone marrow/pee that would suggest that I have it, and the whole thing just doesn't fit. There may be amyloid in my fat sample, but he says that, regardless, that does not suggest that it's systemic, which is the really bad version of it. I suppose there's still the chance that I'd have the genetic form of it, which is really heinous, but signs aren't really pointing to that either.

So, I'm cautiously optimistic, but I'm not throwing any fucking parties until I talk to him tomorrow. It's kinda like there's one second left on the game clock, the shot has been taken, but the ball is just spinning around the rim endlessly, and it won't fall in or out. A "toilet-ringer," if you will.

The only question is, who's gonna be there for the tip-in -- Bill Cartwright or Will Perdue.

Friday, March 21, 2008

My Stay-O at the Mayo: Pt. I...

Quick update from Day 1 of MAYOPALOOZA '08! Woke up at 6 a.m. today feeling like the sun-baked husk of a cicada nymph because of the fasting I had to do last night. Something I've learned? Apparently, your body needs liquid in it in order to take a goddamn dump. I was unable to successfully lay some pipe this morning before all the festivities, so that has certainly put a taint on the day. Heh... taint.

Anywhich, today has been a whirlwind, so far. Met with the doc, Dr. G, who is apparently THE goto dude for amyloidosis in pretty much the world. Very nice guy -- kind of a John Turturro meets a guy who looks kinda like John Turturro... but older, type. I told him my entire saga, he did a fairly quick physical exam and then he told me that he's somewhat dubious about the diagnosis, but wants to redo some of the tests before he makes any real judgments.

So, he whisked me off to get another fat-pad aspiration sample, some blood tests and to pick up a giant moonshine bottle for a 24-hour-whiz-collection Peestravaganza!



The dude who performed the fat aspiration was totally cool -- not a douche like that asshead who did it back in Lansing. And this guy did the fine-needle kind and not the giant core-needle biopsy like Dr. Asshead. In and out -- zip and zip. He told me that a lot of the more inexperienced pathologists fuck the fat pad test up, and that, if there's anything actually in my fat, they'll find it at Mayo. He was strangely comforting, as he sucked meat out of my stomach with a needle.

Then I was whooshed over to the blood-letting area, had a few more gallons of blood sucked out of my gnarled and withered veins. Five minutes later, I was being handed the giant pee-collection vessel and told to "fill 'er up!" Apparently, I have to collect my liquid-leavings for 24 hours, which means I either have to hang around this hotel-of-death for the next day, or I have to lug this fucking carafe around with me as I tour the wondrous sites of Rochester. I was thinking of going downstairs to the "Grand Grill," plopping the jug on top of the table and saying to the waitress, "Honey, fetch me a pitcher of lemonade and pot of coffee and keep 'em comin'. I've got me a flagon to fill."

Oh, I forgot to mention the restaurant. The Old Lady and I went there last night so I could have my last supper before my 7 p.m. food/liquid cutoff time. I was told not to eat "anything fatty," so I ordered a cup of wild rice soup and half a turkey sandwich. Sounds lean, right? Well, the soup was like a cup of Campbell's condensed soup, without the added water, so I couldn't fucking eat that, and the sandwich was on a goddamn greasy-ass croissant, so I had to just gum the meat, sans bread. It was truly pathetic. Meanwhile, the Old Lady ordered a Cobb salad, that came with this nuclear-waste-red dressing that tasted like liquid Blow-Pop, and had chunks of turkey so salty, I got a mild goiter just glancing at them.

Oh, and this hotel, man -- it's like a goddamn geriatric-seeking neutron bomb went off here, as there are all these electric wheelchairs just scattered haphazardly around the lobby. Like all the scooter drivers just vaporized instantly, leaving their vehicles idling in the hallways.



And our room is like a smaller college dorm lounge room (think a smaller Clark 3rd, for any Grinnellians out there), but instead of it smelling like stale beer, it smells like BenGay and adult diapers. And old ham.

I swear to shit, think I've aged about 39 years since I've stepped foot in this fucking mausoleum.

But now I basically wait until my follow-up appointment with the doc on Monday. I collect my tinkle until tomorrow morning, and then we're off to Minneapolis for a Saturday amongst the living. Probably check out the art museum and have a meal somewhere that doesn't serve rice pudding and doesn't employ a waitress that calls anyone under the age of 93 "Hon."

Oh, and thanks to everyone who has sent their "positive vibes" my way. I don't know how this mofo is gonna turn out, and I'm not going to speculate because that will surely jinx everything, but all the well-wishes have made me feel less isolated and shitty, so I appreciate that. But for the the next two days, at least, I can pretend I don't have anything, so I think that's just what I'm a-gonna do.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Holed (up in) The Mayo...

Well, the witching hour is almost nigh -- we leave tomorrow for the Mayo Clinic, with a quick drop-off of the sickly spawn in suburban Chi-town on the way. Not my first choice for Spring Break, but hey, it's getting me outta the house, so there's that.

In classic "someone's-fucking-with-the-crabmeister" fashion, my appointment starts at 7:15 a.m. on Friday morning. I have to have fasted for 12 hours beforehand, which will fucking blow, but the kicker is, they said I should expect to be there for two to four days. Understandable, sure, but they DON'T FUCKING COUNT SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, GODDAMMIT! So they'll poke and prod and finagle my finagleables a bit, then I sit on my fucking ass for two days, and then they resume the finagling on Monday.

We have tentative plans to drive up to Minneapolis for the day on Saturday to hang with a friend, but if the Mayo-nazers perform that heinous bone marrow biopsy on Friday, well we can fucking kiss those plans goodbye. After the last one (a mere two weeks ago, if you're keeping score), the last thing I wanted to do was clomp around crowds of fucking hosers with my newly-depleted-of-marrow pelvis. The Old Lady is welcome to go -- I'll just sit in the Kahler Grand Hotel and watch teevee all day, with my fucking numb finger jammed into my goddamn marrow-extraction hole.

I'm vacillating hourly about whether they're going to end up giving me good or shitty news. I guess any news is better than nothing... unless it's shitty news. I'm pretty sure nothing is better than shitty news. But apparently they know what the fuck they're doing up there, ya hey dere, so we'll see what these almost-Canadians have to say, eh.

Oh, did I mention that Mr. Z now has Miss O's plague and he stayed home from school today, too? No? Hm... must've slipped my completely fucked and frazzled mind. It was fucking nuts today -- running upstairs to give Miss O some soup, back downstairs to find a movie for Mr. Z to watch. Oh, I bought my first OnDemand movie today for the spawnage-- Shrek 3. $4.99 for that fucking green turd. I made up for it, though, with a selection from the "free" menu -- Beethoven's 2nd. If you told me I'd ever stick my kids, unsupervised, in front of a goddamn Charles Grodin dog movie, a sequel no less... well, I'd have told you you were krazy with a "k"... and two "e"s instead of a "y." I just hope they were able to understand the plot, not having seen the original and all.

Anywhich, I'm off. I'll be bringing the laptop up Nort', so barring any unforeseen blood-letting snafus or biopsy-bloopers, I'll be sayin' "Hey-oh!" from the Mayo.

Toodles.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Spring Fever...

Miss O stayed home today with her Caesarlandococci virus, and it looks like she's gonna be home again tomorrow. It's one of those weird-ass viruses where she's fine for like five hours, then her fever jumps up to 100 and she rolls into a ball on the couch until I can mainline some Children's Motrin into her.

She was doing great at bedtime, tonight, and I thought she'd be going to school for sure tomorrow. Then, about five minutes ago, after she'd been asleep for a coupla hours, she woke up and called for me:

MISS O: (whispering loudly but not screaming) Dad! The ants! The ants!

ME: Whuh? What ants?

MISS O: The ants are crawling all over the house!

[at this point I took her temp with the ear thermometer and it read 100.4]

ME: Miss O, you're dreaming. I'm gonna go get some Motrin. And there are no ants in the house.

MISS O: There are... I just saw one!

ME: It's okay. I just stepped on all of them. All the ants are gone.

[I gave her the Motrin and tucked her back in.]

MISS O: Sleep tight, Daddy.

ME: Sleep tight, Miss O.

ANT 1: (pause) Okay, he's gone! Quick -- let's crawl all over all of her shit again in case she wakes up!

ANT 2: What a dumbshit that dad is! Stepped on us, my postpetiole! Hey, whattya say after we're done in here we all crawl into his room, burrow into his ear canal and lay some fucking eggs in his brain.

ALL ANTS: ATTAAAAACK!!!!

Sunday, March 16, 2008

She Must've Eaten the Leper-roni...

Surprise! Miss O has a mystery virus with a spiking fever -- she was up all last night and so far, tonight, she's been up a coupla times already. Gee... I wonder where the fuck she might have picked that up. (Hint: it rhymes with "seizureland.") Fucking motherfucking fuckers.

So, with Miss O out of commission, we spent a good portion of the day sitting on our asses playing board games, instead of basking outside in the sun. Mr. Z dug out this game we used to play when he was wee called "Alpha Animals." You basically make your way around the alphabetized board, naming off different mammals, insects, birds, etc., that start with each letter. It takes approximately 900 hours to play, and we weren't going anywhere, so it was fucking perfect. Here was my favorite moment from the game...

[Miss O had just landed on "N" and was trying to come up with a fish that started with the letter "n."]

MISS O: (lying on the couch) Ummmmmmm... Nipplefish!

[everyone laughs uproariously]

ME: C'mon Miss O. There's no such thing as a nipplefish--

MR. Z: NO! There is too a fish called the Nipplefish!

ME: No way, dude!

MR. Z: (pausing/looking upward/realizing) Oh, no wait. I was thinking of a Lumpsucker.

I proceed to blow a giant snot projectile out of my nose as I almost infarct my brain from laughter. Hilarity ensues and the game is basically over.

[End scene.]

Saturday, March 15, 2008

What Part of 'Beware the Ides of March' Don't I Seem to Understand?



There's the picture... do I really need to elaborate? Do I really need to mention that, yes, it was the Old Lady's turn to take Miss O to yet another birthday at the shit-spewing Hellmouth that is Caesarland but, SOMEHOW, she woke up sick this morning and just couldn't muster the energy needed to survive 2 1/2 hours at that life-sucking anus of a party destination?

Must I go into the fact that I, while not necessarily at the pinnacle of healthitude myself, volun-fucking-teered to lead the girl, headlong into this festering fistula of a food franchise for a nearly three-hour-tour of inedible disks of diarrhea-dough, scabies-ridden circus freaklettes, parades of pallid pederasts and a mind-melting onslaught of unrelenting bells, whistles and epilepsy-inducing light flashes?

Perhaps I'll just show you the reading I registered on the Caesarland-Fun-Meter at about, oh, the ten-minutes-into-the-party mark:



At my next reading, a half-hour later, the meter burst into flames, melted into an oozing green puddle and then morphed into a small, leather-winged gryphon that proceeded to dine on my will to live.

But, Miss O came home with a pair of plastic fangs, a rubber fish and a bottle of bubbles that will all end up in the garbage in about 18 minutes, so it was all fucking worth it.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Fluckr...

So I was button-ing through the pics on my camera, today, and realized that there's like 115 goddamn pictures on that thing that I've totally fucking spaced on. I dumped 'em onto the ol' pyooter, and thought I'd start highlighting a few of them.

Tonight, we start with the perfect visual representation of Mr. Z's, how should I say... "uncultivated self-awareness." Horse-sense, if you will. He had a new pair of pants that was the right length but, surprise, ran a tad wide 'round his waistly-scrawnitude. It was a school morning and, as usual, we were running late. I yelled upstairs for him to put on a belt and hurry on downstairs for breakfast.

Five minutes later, down he shuffled. Here is how the boy, who started reading when he was two, figured a belt should be fastened:



When you look "What the shit?!" up in the dictionary, THAT is the accompanying picture. I have no idea how he even conceived of that particular wrappage. It's wrong on so many levels, yet somehow, so right. I'm thinking of using it as my desktop image, it makes me laugh so fucking hard.

Pic 2 is a bit more grim. I was getting Miss O's bath ready last night when I saw a most horrific sight. As I approached the tub, I was faced with the aftermath of what appeared to be a mass ritual suicide. I had stumbled upon... The Pollytown Massacre:



Those poor, innocent, bikini-clad victims. I'm pretty sure the mermaid was the ringleader. If you look closely, you can see grape Kool-Aid on her dorsal fin. At least it looks as if they all went peacefully to their washcloshy demise. Miss O honored them with a very tasteful burial at sea. Farewell, Pollys... and all your goddamn microscopic rubbery clothes that get stuck between my fucking toes whenever I walk into Miss O's room.

Actually, good riddance.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Never Go to the Doctor!

You can stop reading here if you don't want to read yet another self-absorbed post about my ridiculous health. If you are still reading, then you really need to find something better to do with your fucking time.

I don't want to get into the whole thing, but the last week or so has been the pig-fuckingest shitfuck I've experienced in a long time. My numb extremities have gone from mild annoyance to "gee, this might actually be the goddamn thing that does me in."

But that's not the even the part that pisses me the fuck off the most. I blame my current state of doom and gloom on this fuckhead of a surgeon who took the fat sample outta my stomach. I went for a follow-up appointment with this dickface so he could look at the little hole/bald patch he had carved in my belly. I was expecting to pop in and pop the fuck out.

So, he's almost done pokin' around, and then he goes, "Oh, hey, I got the pathology report! Looks like the found something!" Like he was all excited and shit. He hands me a copy of the report and says, "Looks like you might have amyloidosis! Okay, see ya later!"

What the shit?! And when I asked him what the fuck that meant, he says, "Oh, I don't know. You'll have to follow up with your doctor. See ya!" And this is on last Thursday. I couldn't get ahold of the hematologist, so I got to spend the weekend, sans Old Lady, with my pathology report and my good friend, the innernecks. BAD weekend.

I start looking this fucking thing up and it fucking blows, lemme tell you. There's nary a positive story with this fucker. Lots of chemo, lots of stem cell replacement, lots of memorial guest books to sign. I was working myself up into a fretful lather, the spawnage are running around like meth-addled bush babies, and the Old Lady was in fucking Chicago, living it up big-city-style. My lid had officially flipped its own lid.

But here's why the Old Lady is, and forever will be, the goddamn yin to my yang... the beans to my cornbread... the R2 to my D2... the fucking Engelbert to my Humperdink -- she called on Thursday night and we talked about the test results and shit, and she gets in the car the next day, blows off her conference and drives the fuck home. Against my protestations, I might add. That lady is the goddamn shiznit.

So we both sat around all weekend, depressed, doomed and glued to every fucking relevant/irrelevant case study we could find online. I don't know when or how the spawnage got fed, bathed or dressed, but somehow, they did. It was the longest fucking weekend ever, basically.

Today, I talked to both the pathologist and the blood doc. They said that while the fat pad results were indeed kinda shitty, the bone marrow test was totally clean, so that was a positive. The kicker is, Count Von Bloodula wants me to go to the goddamn Mayo Clinic for a few days to get all the same tests done again, plus a whole slew of new fucking tortures, at their fancy amyloidosis clinic up there. It's gonna be fucking biopsiriffic!!

We go to the doc to talk about what exactly is gonna go down on Thursday. In the meantime, I'm trying to stay away from Google, and I'm popping Xanax like fucking Mike & Ike's.

There -- wasn't that a fun little story?

As a reward for getting through that steaming turd of a post, I will leave you with a drawing that I caught Mr. Z and Miss O doing together last night. Miss O wielded the red marker, Mr. Z the black. If everything turns out well at Mayo, I'm thinking of getting this tattooed across my chest in their honor, for somehow making me laugh my ass off during all this fuckshit.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Survivor: Okemos...

Oh, I'm sorry... did I forget to mention that the Old Lady left on Wednesday for a "conference" in Chicago that lasts until Sunday? Can't imagine how that slipped my mind. It's day two of being outnumbered by the spawnage and, lemme tell you, I may not make it to the weekend.

Don't get me wrong -- I had grand plans for our time together, but my will to live kinda wisped away like gossamer as the Old Lady pulled outta the driveway. I think it has something to do with the "dude, no one's gonna show up at 6:30, like usual, to help out with the goddamn dinner/baths/bedtime routine" reality. I was all set to record some new songs, start some great art projects, go out to dinner, play board games... but this afternoon it was more like "ARR!! Finish your homework!" and "Let's just have chicken tenders tonight," and "AAAHHH!! WHY DO YOU TWO HAVE TO BE SO LOUD?!?!"

It also doesn't help that my fucking hip is still throbbing and I can't sleep when the Old Lady's not here and I have to wait until next Thursday for the results of all my goddamn lab tests, even though I got one report today that said that they may have found something in the stomach tissue biopsy that, according to some very ill-advised, half-assed innernettin' I did, states that I may not live past the end of this post.

I'm trying to be in the moment and shit but damn, the fucking moment cards that're being dealt to me, lately, suck ass.

Maybe if I re-shuffled.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Have You Never Been Marrow...

Okay, I had the bone marrow biopsy this morning and, as much as I'd like to craft a rant about how horrifically painful it was, it really wasn't that bad. Don't get me wrong, it sucked donkey danglers, but it sure as fuck wasn't the Dr. Tongue's 3-D House of Torture that everyone online made it out to be. Fucking online alarmist dickheads.

Basically, after sitting on my ass for a fuckload of time in the waiting room, they took me into another room, had me drop my drawers and lie on my stomach on this table. The doc and the nurse were both very cool, and we were all just a buncha Chatty Cathy's throughout the whole procedure.

The doc started by swabbing down the poop-deck -- actually just above and to the left of the poop-deck. Right around the area where, had I any actual body fat, there'd be one of them back-dimples. Then he jammed a needle filled with local anesthetic into said area and told me there'd be a slight burning sensation. There was. Then he jammed the needle kinda into the bone and said he was trying to numb up the bone sheath or some shit. Luckily, it didn't hurt, or I would've numbed up HIS bone sheath.

Throughout all this, we were just chat-tattering away. He asked where I was from, I said "Chicago," he said he grew up on "the mean streets of Chicago," I said I grew up on "the mean streets of Deerfield." He laughed. I winced. We talked about Iowa (I was wearing my Grinnell College t-shirt), and he said he's thought about doing the Ragbrai bike race. I said "sounds grea--OW!" All in all, it really would've been quite enjoyable, all this chatting, had he not been jamming fucking needles into my bones.

So, yeah, he rammed a needle into the back of my pelvis and said that there would be "some pressure." There was. It was kinda like the pressure you'd feel if... oh, I don't know, if someone were ramming a needle into the back of your pelvis. Then he said I might feel a little pain as he started to draw out the bone marrow.

That kinda sucked. And yes, Jasper Mockinbard, you're right when you said that the sensation was akin to that of the dementors from Harry Potter sucking out one's life force. It was a combination of that and being turned inside out... ass first.

Then came the fun part -- he had to get a biopsy of the bone itself. I don't know exactly how he was accomplishing this, as I was on my stomach facing away from him, but I'm pretty sure he drove a backhoe up my... backhoe, and started chipping away at the bone until a coupla good-sized hunks cracked off. It's probably similar to the feeling someone numb from the waist down would have as they were being mauled by a bear. Or a bear surgeon. Unsettling, yes. Painful, eh.

And that was pretty much it. I had to lie there for 15 minutes to make sure I didn't start spraying blood out my fresh backhole, and then the Old Lady drove me home.

And now here I lie, clotting. I have a headache and my back feels like a bear surgeon mauled it, but all in all, it's not that shitty. I'm not supposed to lift anything or go up any stairs for 10 hours, and I can't swim or bathe for a coupla days, or apparently my cork'll pop out.

There was a strange, Truman Show-esque moment as I was getting ready to leave. The doc said, "That wasn't so bad, was it?" and I agreed. So he says, "Well then, make sure to mention that in your blog."

What. The. Shit?!?!

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Blood Brothers...

I don't think I mentioned that the other day, while I in Count Von Bloodula's waiting room, a familiar looking old gent and his lady walked in and sat down. I kinda recognized the dude, but I couldn't quite place him at first. Then, I pictured him naked, soaping up his balls while standing a coupla feet away from me -- of course! He was one of the old-man-ball-latherers from the Y! And there he was, waiting to see the blood/cancer doctor.

Bummer.

So, we both just sat there, recognizing each other but not acknowledging that fact, each of us wondering what the fuck was wrong with the other guy. I was figuring he was in there for some kinda cancer, or something. It most certainly wasn't ball cancer, that's for sure. That dude must've had the cleanest sack in the mitten, the way he froths that baby up in the shower.

He was probably looking at me thinking, "There's that skinny, hairy lad from the pool. Poor schmuck. Wonder what he's got. Probably nut cancer -- kid doesn't know how to properly lather his nougats. Maybe I'll give him a lesson, next time I see him."

I saw him at the Y today. We looked at each other for a sec, but then we both looked quickly away. I guess we just didn't want to acknowledge each others' mortality, or something. We were at the Y -- we were there to get healthy. To try and undo whatever it was that was causing us to go see the blood doctor in the first place. We parted ways as he entered the sauna and I went out to the pool.

While showering after my swim, I lathered up extra good in his honor. Here's to your health, old man.