Probes

Today's probing I hope to be the last for some time. It's not only that the preparation for a good probing is miserable, in that you can't eat, and you can only drink things that don't make you happy. It's not only that you have to drink vile fluids that cause your gastric system to rebel, ejecting every living thing from your gut. It's not only that it just takes up so much of your mental energy for days before and day of that you can't be pleasant to be around. It's mostly that just you'd rather not have one more opportunity for someone to deliver bad news. The latest round of tests is supposed to be filling in the details. Getting a roadmap in place for my surgeon. I'll spare you the details, but the reasoning for the tests makes sense. In the end, I couldn't say "Avast! You've probed me for the last time!" Although, my insurance company would probably have approved.

In the end (so to speak), I tried to be charming: I joked with big Radu, the Easter Island faced Romanian, who seemed insanely happy to be working as an RN, anywhere other than Romania. I critiqued, positively, the sterile technique of the Triathalon running, Lance Armstrong loving nurse who "accessed my port". (I'm very proprietary about my port, and fussy about who gets near it; it's a trust thing, really.) I even tried to cheer up the recovery nurse before I was completely awake. Kim tell's me I was gesturing drunkenly and grunting out some of the funniest material I've ever delivered in a recovery room.

40 minutes later I was sipping tea and enjoying a nice felafel at a Persian restaurant down the road, another miracle of modern medicine.