"Just keep me wondering' "

(Allman Brothers Band reference)

GastroPod ran me off to a joint that could do some blood work, so he would have it at 11AM for our meeting. If things weren't scary before, they aren't now.

So what?

Um, I DID buy two cases of beer today and intend to enjoy them completely, so bear with me or not.

Thing is, when I went in for the blood work, it turns out I had my very first allergic reaction to iodine or whatever it is that they use to irradiate you. It didn't take long either. By the time I left CATScanDu, my right arm was as flaky as an Italian pastry and there were what I would call, for want of a better phrase, as blood bruises on my arm. Lots of them. Clearly, in my opinion, an allergic reaction, one I don't want to reveal in the future so that I don't have to go through a bunch of crap to get my next CT scan.

I can live with it.

Nothing but a thing.

GastroPod did not want to keep me wondering, wondeful dude that he is (and with an appointment scheduled for tomorrow), so he sent me off for blood work. I have the order, and plan to find out what he was looking for, but in the meantime, it was a most interesting experience.

I hate waiting, as you do. And when I walked up to the front desk of a place that is supposed to be part of my very own hospital network, my very own insurance network, and they wanted me to fill out forms AND wait for a fax from GastroPod's office, I was pretty pissed off.

I expressed myself, you might say, without being too offensive, mind you, to the young lady behind the counter. Why, I asked, do I have to keep repeating the same stuff over and over? Why, I asked, is my order for the blood work not already here?

No answers. I was Mr. Bellicose, I suppose.

And then, some beautiful lady came to the counter, while I, of course, sat in the nearest seat, hoping for my name to be called, and they asked her all of these questions of a personal nature, and I thought, my God, if I were a stalker, she would be in deep kimshi.

And so I expressed as much. I said, "Your privacy protections suck. This lady just gave you enough information that any pervert would have her on their radar."

They apologized to her, I think for ME, but she said, "No, he is right. I was uncomfortable giving you my bra size." Okay, she didn't say that, but you get the idea. It's incredible what they allow to pass over one side of a desk or partition to another.

And, by the way, when she left, much later, she said thanks to the person that was handling her situation, and made a point to say thanks to me too. So I followed her home.

NO I DIDN'T. But I could have, if I'd been really paying attention.

In my own case, this hospital network acts like it has it all together, but it doesn't (speaking of my own wife's network, by the way), and I had to have GastroPod's people fax over a permission slip for me to give blood.

Geez.

It turns out that blood nurse, who I figured was pretty ticked at me for a number of reasons, is a two-time breast cancer survivor. I loved her immediately (was she lying?). And she did a good stick, so what's not to love.

Tomorrow, my doctor, named after a pirate I think, and I will meet to see what we can do about this nasty little sac or whatever it is.

Clearly he is concerned. Oddly, if it is not cancer, my alert color goes down tremendously, even though my ever-thoughtful, ever-cheerful, wife reminded me that you can die of things other than cancer.

What a babe.