Gastrointestinal update 2

Well, 72 hours later, and the GI doctor is having second thoughts. Just to be 200% sure, he says. Biopsy showed only normal tissue, but he still wants to have another look. So now he's talking about a CT scan. Which would actually be sort of interesting, depending on what sort of unpleasant prep would have to occur first. And possibly another colonoscopy. As long as the same drugs are used, I'm okay with that, I guess. And this is Canada, so it's all free.

But this time, I want to see an actual image of my ileocecal valve.

Gastrointestinal update

For those of you who were waiting. Doc says my colon is fine. The 'irregular' thing he biopsied was perfectly normal tissue. Turns out I have an atypical-looking ileocecal valve. Who knew?

So we still don't know where my hemoglobin is going or why my total iron bindability (?) is up. But at least I don't seem to be bleeding from anywhere, nor do I have any scary diseases. Or rather the list of scary diseases I could have has shortened somewhat.

Just chillin

It's currently -6C, which is warmer than last night, but it's morning and I'm cold anyway. I was trying to enjoy a hot cup of coffee but I managed to spill it all over. I woke up this morning with a weird orange stain on my radial fingers and thumb that isn't washing off, but for the life of me I can't figure out what I could have been fiddling with in my sleep that would actually stain my skin like iodine. There is no iodine in the house, not even in the salt.

But I'm taking it a little easy this morning. I have an appointment with the GI guy regarding my Unpleasant Medical Procedure a couple of weeks ago, after which I have to go to school and accomplish something, and then it's Yoga class.

Last night, I had a fairly successful read of an early draft (let's say version 1.2) of one of my plays in my playwri(gh)ting class, with a lot of good comments and some very good ideas for making actually work. So now I have to put it away and accomplish work. Today, in office hours before yoga, I'm going to try to run a Praat script and come close to understanding what's going on. That's my big goal for the day.

Although depending on what the GI guy says, I may just come home and take a nap afterward. We'll see. Stay tuned.

Neologism report

This is just for the historical evidence value of the observation. On Thursday evening, November 13th 2008, John Sauder (meteorologist at CBC Manitoba) claimed to have made up the word "snizzle" for mixed drizzle and snow. "Made up" in the sense of it not being an official meteorological term. But he took personal responsiblity for it.

I mention this only in case "my very good friend" Katherine Barber (editor-in-chief of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary) is paying attention. ;-)

End of a loooong week.

Which considering Tuesday was technically a holiday it shouldn't have been, but there you go.

Plans for the weekend? Cleaning house, cooking stuff, catching up with work, trying to finalize new drafts of two playscripts.

Just for fun (watch through to after the credits) (and yes, this is work-safe--this is a family blog):

Things to remember to do this Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day (known in the old country as Veterans Day) is tomorrow, November 11th, and accordingly everything is closed. Or most things are closed except when their not. Or something.

So shopping, going out for brekkies/brunch/lunch/snack/dinner not so much in the cards, because likely any place I want to go won't be open when I want to go there. Including the University.

So tomorrow, I have to 'work' from 'home'. Which shouldn't be a problem, except that I never seem to get much work done at home, what with the mounting distractions.

So back into goal-setting mode, here are the things I want to accomplish tomorrow (apologies to any out there for whom remembering or veteraning are principal activities for Remembrance Day)

1) get up and out of bed and hopefully fed and caffeinated before the cannons start (I live basically a couple of blocks from Memorial Park, where every holiday there is a 21 cannon salute. Not gun, cannon. On most holidays, it occurs at noon, rattles windows and nerves, but is basically innocuous. On Remembrance Day it occurs at 11:11 am. Which should be fine, unless your like me and you think you want to sleep in on holidays, so this goal is about getting out of bed at a normal hour, something I failed to do this morning)

2) Write (set) the exam for Communication Disorders for Wednesday afternoon.

3) Write (set) the exam for Anatomy on Friday (if I don't do it tomorrow, I'll end up having to do it on Thursday and I don't wanna)

4) Dig out some of my old data files and try to get them marked up in Praat enough to do a trial run on Will's/Sky's scripts to see if I can figure out how to run my data through Praat

5) If (4) is successful, then try to get R running and see if I can figure out how to get it to do anything useful.

These last two don't have to happen tomorrow, but if I can at least get one or the other started for next week, when some movement on that front must be on the way to occurring.

6) Clean something. Or start to. Or try to start to. Or at least put something away. Maybe sort some laundry. Something like that.

Things not to do tomorrow:

waste time playing computer games
waste (too much) time on Facebook
work on my play rewrites because it's more fun than doing any of the above
forget my pills (something I've been doing a lot lately)

Thus speaketh the planner.

Another random oddness

Discovered on my friend Clay's blog:

• Grab the nearest book.
  
• Open the book to page 10.
  
• Find the fifth sentence.
  
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
  
• Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST
  

Well, the first book I picked up was Ductigami: The art of the tape by Joe Wilson, but page 10 was a picture. So I went to the next one, which was Tyler's Ultimate: Brillaint simple food to make anytime by Tyler Florence. Page 10 was half of a picture (i.e. pages 10 and 11 are the heading pages for the "appetizers" section). So I looked around and finally found a book in range that was likely to have text on page 10. This turned out to be The Slayers of Seth by Paul Doherty:

There had been no flowers, no fresh fruit nor strong wine that fateful night...

Three tries, and even then I get a sentence that just trails off. What does that say about me?

Footloose and suture free!

At 6:30 this morning (gag) I got up, put my contacts in the wrong eyes, took care of the morning ablutio0ns, put my contacts in the right eyes, and hit the road. It wasn't even light out when I left. But all was good. In spite of the early hour, I was headed off to have my sutures out. Yay.

After a month, my graft is in place and seems to be holding, and I'm sutureless. I can start flossing and brushing on the lower left again, and even chewing over there, although I still have to be a little careful with non-soft foods, which I take to be anything with edges, like chips or toast.

So then I took myself off for a hearty breakfast (Smitty's western skillet--fried breakfast potatoes, chopped sausage, red and green bell peppers and scrambled eggs, covered in hollandaise, yum), and now I'm at work. And expecting to fall face first into my keyboard.

You wouldn't think someone hopped up on five cups of coffee could be so sleepy, but here I am.

But at least I'm sutureless. I've got an appointment on Thursday for a massage, Tuesday for a haircut, week after for a check-in with my GI guy (he found something 'irregular' during my colonoscopy, but I'm figuring no one's colon is 'perfect'--like a CAT scan, there's always something odd). Then the first week in December I'm back at the periodontist's checking on the graft and then to the ophthamologist. Then in January I have my usual round of endocrinologist, dentist, and family doctor checks.

Egad. I'm certainly getting my money's worth out of the Canadian medical care system.