Was It Memorex Or Blogger?

Something was wrong and I couldn't publish here for technical reasons for a couple of tries. It might have been my setup, and the glitch probably was something wrong at my end of the spectrum. This morning I had to restart my DSL modem, and now everything seems hunky dory. Yesterday I had to keep an appointment at the Durham VA Hospital. Pretty good day. I met my new rheumatologist.

My first rheumatologist at the Durham VA graduated from his Duke residency last month. He told me he is moving to Fayetteville, so I might see him again at the VA Hospital there occasionally. My "family" doctor (oddly, she's referred to as my family doctor by the specialists, but there is only me to attend as 'my family') is located at the Fayetteville VA.

The new doctor is only a little younger. He told me his last nayme is the same as a province in China, so it ain't rocket science for me to figure it out he's of Chinese descent, but his first name is Tony. He speaks better English than me, like English is his first language. He's tall for a Chinese person, and of course, as you would expect from a person serving a residency at Duke, a person with mental gifts he don't have to brag about for me to easily observe his integrity, especially when he summed up his assessment of my case to his supervisor right in front of me. She seemed to find my obvious confusion caused by their medical palaver amusing. She winked at me, and told me HE would explain what they said. She seems very clever. Good for me! I think I got some more good help.

I wrote what's written below on Sunday, but couldn't publish it. I'm too lazy to re-edit to make things fit.

I seem to be less confrontational since the colonoscopy procedure was performed on me. It could be that I wasn't full of shit for about a week. Part of it had to be that I was rendered unconscious by drugs during the procedure, and seeing how easy and pleasantly it could be done somehow proved to me that I'm not God. I couldn't have felt more helpless and out of control of my own life than to submit voluntarily to be anesthetized to the point of unconsciousness.

Particularly by a group of evangelicals who seemed to want to proselytize or pray over me while I'm out like a light. I honestly don't know why each and every one of the surgery team I talked to face to face brought up their religious faith in one way or the other. The surgeon himself assured me (NOT!) that he thought his religious faith did more for people than his surgical skills. To give him credit, he did say that he felt like he had saved a lot of people a lot of agony by removing potentially fatal polyps in the colon that could (and if they lived long enough, they would) turn cancerous. I trusted the sincerity I sensed in his voice as he said that.

I also trusted the easy familiarity he exhibited with his surgical team in the OR. Everybody there obviously respected him from the time he walked in, and they were really friendly toward him even though differential to his leadership role. The nurse or anesthesiologist that knocked me out before I knew it, looked like the actress who played the mother on the TV show, Little House On The Prairie. A no-nonsense sort of person whose eyes sparkled anyway.

I was unconscious until I was back in the recovery room where my brother who drove me over there was waiting when I woke up. On the way home he told me that the doctor said that he had removed one polyp, and my brother implied that the cameras revealed no other problems. He might try to protect me if there was anything else, and not tell me if they found out they were too late and sent me home to die.

I was told during the pre-opt interview by Nurse Cratchett that they would send me a very detailed letter that would give me the complete rundown on what the cameras revealed. She even seemed proud of just how thorough the upcoming report will be. I ain't gwine let my guard down until that letter gets here. They could have found anything in there. I was unconscious, and my brother is overly-kind, how would I know?

I did get a CT scan my doctor ordered at the same time I was there for the pre-opt interviews. I got a letter showing there was nothing unusual going on and no sinus problems were revealed.

My regular doctor over at Fayetteville also gave me a printout of my latest blood work up to bring home with me. It wasn't as easy for me to interpret, but I got some help from a friend who knows the whole deal. Besides, my blood tests and especially the blood pressure tests seem to elicit positive comments from the technicians, and they tell me about it.

One x-ray technician commented on how much metal she finds in veterans x-rays, when she didn't find any in me. I never got wounded, only shot at. I honestly don't feel envious of the boys who did. I actually joined the Navy to see the world. Getting all shot up or killed just because I was curious about sex as a kid was not why I did my patriotic duty, but I did my patriotic duty anyway. Now, I'm happy I did.

To this day I can't think of one good reason why anybody would try to kill me, but now I know homo sapiens don't need one. People like to kill people. They're just wanna do it without payback. Some of the genocide stories I've been exposed to in some one way or the other have affected me more than others. The one in Rwanda has horrified me the most. Just being the member of a certain tribe could get you hacked to death for no other reason than that. That's cold.

I'm headed back to Durham tomorrow to meet my new Duke Med resident at the VA Hospital who will most likely be my rheumatologist for the next three years until their class graduates. My first rheumatologist graduated June 28th. I'm hoping they'll speak good English, but however that works out they'll be supervised by an actual rheumatologist who might even have a little Southern drawl by now. It's a pretty good deal for me, as far as I'm concerned. I get to have two doctors, who, because one of them is learning, will talk about my situation a lot.