I think somebody ought to check up on this Nick Douglas fellow and make sure he’s ok, because this is not normal. You Should Feel Sad on Your Birthday
This is a Lifehacker article explaining that we should all be sad for a while on purpose on every birthday because we can never go back and one day we’re going to run out of them or something. I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. Maybe one of you can read it and explain it to me in a way that might elicit a response other than “what the fuck?”
Everyone likes a little cry sometimes; that’s why there are sad songs and movies and books. A little elective melancholy exercises your emotions even when your actual life is going well, and it can leave you mentally and physically refreshed. Some times are particularly well-suited: rainy days, late nights, and birthdays.
The best birthday still contains one inevitable sorrow: it reminds you of the separation between past and future, the one-way nature of time, that there is no going back to the you of last year. You are growing, you are aging, you are mortal. The happier your present situation, the more you will one day lose—and in your best-case scenario, you’ll lose it all on the day that the world loses you.
That’s why every year, at some point on my birthday, I like to put on a little music, walk around or sit quietly, and feel sorry for myself. For fun. The first few years I did it, right out of college, I was broke and lonely and I really did feel sorry for myself. But I kept it up as the years got better, and I even indulged this year, while I was enjoying paternity leave with my baby daughter. And if optional sadness sounds appealing—and if you’re not worried about triggering an ongoing mental health issue—then I recommend a nice birthday cry.
It goes on like this, complete with tips on timing, mood setting and things to do and not do while you’re structuring your emotions like some kind of weird ass playdate.
Listen. I’m all about alone time, reflection and resetting. In fact, if I’m being perfectly honest, I want to be alone far more often than life allows me to be alone. Having time alone enables me to have the energy and good humour to deal with people when I’m not able to be alone. But at no time have I ever thought during those alone moments that boy, what I really need to do right now is bring myself down on purpose for no good reason. That’s the thing about being alone and having a chance to think. The mood sets itself based on whatever your current circumstances happen to be. For me personally, if I’m happy (which I basically am most of the time), I want to keep doing that. I can use my alone time to be productive or to relax with some sports or good tunes or anything else I like. If something triggers a long ago memory that I’m not sure how to feel about, I’ll sit and listen to some music or whatever sounds I can hear around me and let it swim around in my head until either I figure it out or something else replaces it. And if something is bothering me, then I’ll be sad or anxious or whatever my body and mind tell me to be in that moment. But there’s no way in hell I could ever plan any of that, nor would I want to.
And especially not on my birthday. Maybe when I’m old as the hills and all of my friends and loved ones are buried under those hills we can talk about being sad, but for now, even though I’m aging every year, my birthdays are pretty great. If anything, they’re a reminder that, even though things are not and will never be absolutely perfect and I’ll always have a few regrets, there’s not a whole lot I have to be sad about in this life. Every birthday is a reminder of how many people care about me. They’re a steady parade of messages and calls and even the odd visitor who comes bearing free lunch, laughs and well wishes. How, when faced with that, am I supposed to pretend that things are shitty? If things aren’t shitty right now, they aren’t shitty right now. Forcing myself to pretend that they are just feels unhealthy.
Just a few quick questions about human behaviour, if I may.
We had a friend staying with us a while ago. While him and I were making breakfast together one morning, he asked me for a fork. I gave him one, of course. I then watched as he started using it to crack eggs rather than doing what I assume everyone else does, tapping them on the counter or on the edge of the bowl. Yes, dude was bonking each egg with the fork until he could break it open. I’ve been around for just about 40 years, and I can safely say I’ve never seen anyone do that before. I even asked brother Brad about it last time I saw him since he’s a very good cook and he bakes all the time, and he took my side. So what’s the matter with my friend and how can I get him the help he needs?
We did our laundry on the weekend. Searching for enough free machines in a big apartment building can be a frustrating exercise, especially when some of them are broken. And indeed, that’s what happened this go round…or so we thought.
Carin found an open one, and without giving it the absolute best look her wee little self could give it but one that’s generally good enough, tossed something in.
Splash.
Oops, that one’s pooched. Right?
Wrong.
As it turns out, somebody had come and gotten their stuff out of it a full 12 minutes early.
I hope something went very wrong in this person’s life very suddenly, because why else would you do that? You’re losing out on the benefit of the full rinse and spin, plus since they’re still going to be wringing wet, whatever time you think you’re saving by not letting the washer finish is going to be eaten up by extra drying time. And if you are going to do something that weird, should you not at least have the decency to close it and let it run out the rest of the clock so that the next guy can use it without having to wait? The machines don’t bill you by the minute, it’s ok.
This is just one strange person and not something that people who think they don’t have enough time for anything anymore do now, right? Please tell me that’s what it is.
And speaking of laundry, what happened to the universal public laundry room code? For years, every place I ever lived or visited had the same rule. If a washing machine was open, it was yours for the taking. If it was closed it was either spoken for or broken. Dryers were a little more murky, but I’ve seen enough situations where people signal that they’re free by not closing them all the way to take that as a thing.
But this building we live in now, it’s like the freaking wild west down there. Nothing signals anything. People leave baskets and clothes on top of equipment they have no plans to use, which has always been the other acceptable method of reservation. Out of order machines are left open, plugged in and signless as if they’re ready to go. Open dryers with clothes left in them for so long that they’ve actually had a chance to cool down? Why not.
None of this should be happening. The tenants here represent a very wide age range so should know how this is supposed to work. Do Carin and I live among barbarians or is there simply no longer any need for manners and order in the clothes cleaning space?
We had a friend staying with us this weekend, and since him and I used to love Sleeman Honey Brown but neither of us had drank one in years I decided to pick some up.
Christ, what a mistake.
Seriously, if we got one that wasn’t watery *and* funny tasting, we were treated to one that was watery *or* funny tasting. We didn’t even make it through half the box in three days.
I don’t know if I happened on a bad case, if both of our tastes have changed in exactly the same way or if Sapporo has finally gotten around to wrecking it, but after drinking a few I can safely say that whatever is going on here, I hope it’s not the new normal. It’s not undrinkable, but it’s far from enjoyable.
Don’t worry though, not all hope was lost. When our pal got into town we all met up at Abe Erb for dinner and drinks and we ended up hauling home a big bag of their awesome beer, so we were well set in spite of whatever was going on with the Sleeman.
But please, tell me there’s nothing going on with the Sleeman. Honey Brown used to be one of my favourites, and I don’t want this junk to be my last memory of it.
A few things as I sip on some tea that I’ve just realized I absent-mindedly put sugar in twice. Fuck.
I keep forgetting to mention it, but if for a couple of days last week you tried to leave a comment and couldn’t, feel free to try again. I didn’t notice a problem at first because the comment volume for everything that isn’t spam is way down these days, but I fixed it over the weekend and all *should* be ok now.
I also want to apologize again if any of you are getting weird internal server or page not found errors when accessing the site. I don’t think most of you are, but if you do just refresh the page and everything should load up normally. I’ve done a few things in the hopes of fixing it, but I think whatever it is might be beyond our control. For now, just hang in there. A lot of you have been through broken with us before. We’ll get through it together. Yes, I’m saying that more for my own benefit than yours. Breathe Steve, breathe.
I think I may have mentioned this before, but am I the only one who gets headaches from hell after going to the dentist? I don’t know what causes them, but I’ve had them for as long as I can remember. They’re even worse than a lot of the ones I get from being on the phone. They’re so bad that Carin has taken to meeting me afterwards whenever she can and helping me get home so I don’t get lost or hit by a car. That’s the one disadvantage to the dentist being right across the street from the house. It’s great on the way over when I’m feeling fine and dandy, but at the end when I’m almost a corpse but I’m too close to home for getting a ride to be sensible, no buys. It might not be so bad if medicine wasn’t dirt useless on them, but none of the stuff that generally works on me will touch them and I’m usually a write-off until at least the next day.
Thankfully after my most recent bout with this shit I was better the next day, because the next day was yesterday and I had a concert to go to.
We went to see the Crash Test Dummies and Grapes of Wrath. If you don’t remember the Grapes of Wrath, if you’re me they’re these guys,
and if you’re Carin, they’re these guys.
They played both of those and a bunch more tunes old and new. They sounded great. I actually wouldn’t mind seeing them in more of a club setting as opposed to the theatre we were in.
If you don’t remember the Crash Test Dummies, if you’re Canadian they’re these guys,
and if you’re American, they’re most likely these guys.
I still can’t hear that without my brain inserting the kazoos at the end.
They were also pretty great. I’m not sure I’d go as far as saying I have a new favourite Dummies song, but I definitely discovered at least one more last night that I really, really like.
Last night they stripped it down and slowed the tempo a little so that everything had a bit more time to sink in. It was, as I sit here feeling rather in articulate at the moment, quite wow. There are lyrics here if you’d like them.
Good job picking that show, Carin!
And now, I am off to make a cup of tea that will not punch me in the pancreas and to see what else today has in store! Farewell for now!
I realize that there may be more important world issues about which to get angry, but right now I wouldn’t mind slapping around the person who came up with button fly jeans, so that’s what we’re going to talk about.
No, I don’t own any. I’m foolish sometimes, but I’m neither crazy nor an idiot. What happened is that I learned of their existence when I didn’t pay close enough attention and tried a pair on while out shopping this week and that alone is more than enough to upset me.
Seriously, guy. What were you thinking? Have you ever worn a pair of jeans? Have you forgotten how tight the one buttonhole can be and how, especially until it’s been used for a while, you have to beat the hell out of your fingers just to get the damn thing fastened or undone? If you do remember that feeling, I want you to think about it and how much it sucks. Are you thinking about it? Good. Now multiply that frustration by four…no, we’ll say seven because now you’re doing that stupid button dance over and over and over and over again in a smaller space close to where your nuts live. Even on a surface level it should be obvious that this is not ideal. Throwing on one’s pants in the morning should not be a task more difficult than opening a key ring and should involve zero risk of repeatedly flicking oneself in the dick.
But there’s an even bigger problem here. Have you, my friend, never had to take a leak in public? It should be a simple unzip, go, zip, leave process. But because of you and your sadism, I have to stand there looking for all the world like I’m intensely playing with myself while everyone around me is doing their business. And this is to say nothing of those unfortunate situations when one must expeditiously get those pants down because bowels are unsympathetic to your need to fiddle with multiple buttons.
I’ll admit that I’m not the biggest fan of button flies to begin with and do my best to avoid them whenever possible, but I’ve begrudgingly come to accept that sometimes they’re part of life if you need to dress up because dressing up is mostly for assholes and it has to be an asshole who came up with the button fly. But jeans are normal people pants. They should be built for ease and comfort first and foremost. Zippers exist and should be used at all times. You can chime in with your wrong opinion if you wish, but I shall not be swayed.
I’m better than I used to be, but I still have a hell of a time getting a good night’s sleep. It often doesn’t take much to wake me up or sometimes even to keep me from getting into a solid, deep sleep in the first place. Staying asleep is generally a much bigger problem than getting there (I’m one of those who can go from completely awake to how did I miss the last 20 minutes of that show in what feels like a few seconds), but I’m finding that there’s one thing that has really started messing with my ability to nod off.
It never used to be a problem and I can’t pinpoint exactly when it became one, but for whatever reason now, if I brush my teeth right before bed I can pretty predictably add an extra hour or so to the amount of time I’m going to be awake. There’s something about my mouth being all tingly fresh that convinces my brain that I must be going somewhere or that someone is coming here and I have to be ready, even though I’m tired, wearing what I sleep in and have crawled into bed.
She hasn’t come out and said it, but I have a fairly clear sense that Carin thinks I’m kind of fuckity doo here. Even I wonder if she may be on to something, because like I said, I did this for most of my life without it being a problem. So if maybe somebody could tell me “yeah, I do that too” or call me an alien and ask me which backward ass planet I came from, that would be nice.
How’s everyone’s weekend going? Ours has been rather Christmasy.
Today we’re heading downtown to take in some of the Christkindl Market. Today is the last day, so if you haven’t been yet or want to go again, get moving. It’s open between 10 and 4 today. It’s a great way to get some unique Christmas shopping done and give yourself diabetes. I especially recommend the apple fritters and the schnitzel dinner, both of which Carin was lovely enough to pop in and bring home for us a couple of nights ago because it’s close to her office.
As for yesterday, we went to the first of the family Christmas parties. It’s nice to have them spread out this year instead of all in one big clump like usual. It was a lovely time (thanks Brad for having us), much of which I spent playing with the Seppa Tebby Tebby nephew. Apparently he was excited to see me.
“Are you going to uncle Brad’s today?”
“Yes.”
“Is uncle Steve going to be there?”
“Let’s go wild!”
Nobody knows where that came from. I don’t think I’ve ever said that to him in his life. But hey, I’ll take being the let’s go wild uncle if it means I’m one of the fun relatives.
And fun we did have. We ate freezies together. We jumped around. We ran. We played with an airplane complete with pre pillow (I had him saying propeller by the end). We made every animal sound you can think of. We walked hand in hand in a giant circle around the house like 25 times saying hello to people including my dad, who decided to slap me on the ass every time we passed him. Don’t ask. These are my family. Just smile to yourself, say “that explains a lot” and move on. We sang songs. Boy were there songs. We were treated to such classics as Hickerary Dock, Humpty Dumpty Haggery Fall, and my personal favourite, Rassie In the Buppy In the Kitchen. I was able, somehow, to determine that that would be this:
There was also much Wheels On the Bus, including verses about lions, tigers, bears, and something that sounded like “the queer on the bus goes tutu ray.” Yup, we’re all just as lost as you are.
I even got to hear him swear for the first time! We’re all sat down to dinner and my sister realizes “shit, I forgot one of the presents!” And of course, of all the things to repeat, “Shit!” as loud and as clear as the day is long. We all nearly died. I didn’t know if I was going to wear Carin’s mouthful of stuffing or if she was going to choke on it, but what a time.
Next up is Christmas with Carin’s family, at least the parts of it that are going to be in the country. It will be smaller than usual, but there will be children, which means there will be fun. I’m sure one of us will be around to talk all about it.
Ok, so that’s not entirely true. It would be more accurate to say that I have a love hate relationship with it. It’s great when people are being funny or you’re chatting with your buddies or when you’re able to help someone solve a problem, but far too often it’s filled with so much garbage. People randomly tweeting their location check-in from the Sub Shack or that they just beat somebody at some game or other as if anyone who isn’t them gives a shit. Everything is the biggest outrage in world history, at least for four or five minutes until the next biggest outrage in world history comes along. People being shamed and insulted for not sharing the mob’s opinion about said outrage even if their reasons for not doing so are decently thought out. Most of the people who follow you are either fake or brands whose algorithm followed you because you happened to use a keyword it recognizes. Donald Trump.
But worse than all of that is how impersonal, fleeting and disposable everything becomes. Honestly, I really don’t like what it does to my brain. I see something, momentarily process it, and then it’s gone. Like really gone. Have you ever been scrolling through the timeline, laughed uproariously at something, moved along and then a minute later had someone ask you what’s so funny only to realize that you don’t know? That’s a weird feeling. Unsettling, even. And it’s happened to me a bunch of times. Carin too. Twitter brain, we call it. At least we’re aware of it and can call it something as we snap back to reality. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but it seems as though plenty of people can’t. We’re all so long on information and short on attention span that almost nothing can make a true, lasting impact anymore. Yeah it’s technically on the internet forever once it’s spoken, but unless you’re really looking for it, after a few minutes or maybe days if you’re lucky it might as well not exist.
And that brings me back, I think, to why I started writing this in the first place. Twitter, at least as far as I’m concerned, has slowly started to fuck up the blog. In the old days I would open a blank page, say something about how dumb it is that you need a pair of scissors to open a package of new scissors, hit publish and then wait for the reaction. Remember Matt and his door? That thing had an absurd number of comments on it before they were stolen from us. Nowadays, I’m not sure a post like that would exist. Most likely, it would get caught up in the stupid is this a post or a tweet internal debate, become a tweet because there aren’t enough words to bother making it a post and then be done with instead of becoming the legend it did. Ditto this, which although it’s kind of terrible I still get asked to bring back now and then. No doubt it would be a series of useless tweets were I to do it today.
It’s been a slow process like I said, but lately I’ve found myself sharing a lot more things on Twitter than end up going here, and that’s dumb. What’s wrong with just saying I like this, you should listen to it or I hate this because it sucks and leaving it at that? Nothing, I’m realizing. I should have always known this because I have the benefit of statistics, but somewhere along the way I started to get a little lost.
The statistics in question, in case it isn’t obvious, are the site statistics. On a daily basis, they tell me two important things. One is that almost without exception, the most popular page on our entire website is the main page, the one where all of the newest posts live. The second is that in spite of the hundreds of followers Carin and I each have, Twitter hasn’t done shit for this place. Have people found the blog because of Twitter? Sure they have, and I appreciate those people. But most of the time I can count our social media traffic on my fingers, and I think it’s time I get the message. People clearly want to hear what we have to say, even if it’s brief enough to lazily put in a tweet. They did before and they do now. Nobody hits the front page of your website and then clicks older posts five or ten times because they don’t want to read what’s there or think that you suck. So why am I putting so much out on Twitter where it’s doing us and our visitors no good? Why don’t I go back to putting it here where I can control it, there’s an easily searchable record of it and it benefits everyone who wants to find it?
From now on, I’m going to do my best to get back to doing that. With a few obvious exceptions (local power outages, road closures), if it’s good enough for Twitter, it’s good enough for the damn Vomit Comet. I used to treat Twitter as part notepad for the blog and part scaled up MSN Messenger. That worked pretty well, when I let it. It’s time to untrain my Twitter brain and let it work again.
We discovered that Spotify has everything when just for fun, we yelled “Hey Google, play the MRI song” and it played this. So…soundtrack?
So a couple Saturdays ago, I had to have an MRI of my brain, specifically to have a good look at my pituitary gland. Don’t worry, I feel fine. The doctor’s trying to rule some things out and this was the easiest way to do it. I had never had an MRI before, and apparently it gave me a lot to think about…so here are my random thoughts in no particular order.
I am relieved to know that I’m not claustrophobic. I was pretty sure I wasn’t, but I haven’t had occasion to find myself squished into an unfathomably-small space…so I was afraid I was going to find out exactly how claustrophobic I was at precisely the wrong time. I am also relieved to know that I don’t have any forgotten metal in me. I was 99.99999 percent sure there was no weird metal in me, but a little voice said “But what if you’ve forgotten something?” I was having visions of that guy with the fir tree in his lung, or the dude who had a nail shaken loose that he didn’t even know was there by an MRI. Sometimes it’s not good to read weird news stories. They tend to bubble to the surface when they shouldn’t. I was super paranoid about making sure I had remembered to take things off that I don’t even think about, like my MedicAlert bracelet. I was afraid I would forget one little thing and boom!
The actual scan itself wasn’t so bad, I had read a whole bunch about what to expect, so none of the grindings and knockings and buzzings and other noises really phased me a ton. They were weird, but they weren’t totally unexpected. But I did spend a bunch of time afraid that the MRI would discover some metal. It took me a good couple of minutes to be convinced that nope, I’m all good.
I remember saying afterwards to my dad that it felt like I was being stuffed into a tiny chamber. His response was funny. “That’s because you were.” Well I’m glad I’m not imagining things.
I didn’t know this, but apparently if you move your eyes during an MRI, it can screw up the scan. That’s a scary thing to know, since my eyes move without provocation because of blindness. Thanks, nystagmus. Thanks a heap. It’s never good when I’m practically in the scanner and they put a cloth over my eyes. I ask what that’s for, getting all kinds of terrible and unwelcome visions ranging from animals being blindfolded on vet shows to that scene from the book “The Girl With All the Gifts” when they’re about to saw into that kid’s brain. The technologist says “Oh it’s to keep your eyes from moving.” When I tell her my eyes move involuntarily, she then says “Well we’ll see how it goes.” Considering how much trouble I had to go through to get this far, I was very worried some jittery eyes would have made me have to start all over again. I clamped my eyes shut tight, all the while feeling them jiggle under the lids. Thankfully, when I called back to check a few days later, my jitterbugging eyes didn’t gum up the works.
I’m sure you’re wondering what I mean by “considering how much trouble I had to go through to get this far.” Well, to make a long story short, I didn’t know they needed to put an IV in so they could shoot me full of contrast dye. The letter I got said they may or may not need to use contrast dye. So, I didn’t drink a bunch of water before because I didn’t want to have the need to pee while stuffed in the grinding and knocking tube of doom, and that was a dumb decision because there is a bathroom in the waiting room in imaging, of course there is, and my veins still suck. You know it’s bad when an emergency room nurse prods about and says “Well, I can’t work with what isn’t there.” They almost sent me home without doing the MRI, but I asked for a big glass of water, chugged it down, and a tech from CT was able to find a vein a bit later and get into it with a baby needle. Yup, a baby needle. My veins are that fiddly. But the time between when they started to get me ready to go in to when they discovered that my veins were little arseholes to when they completed the scan took over 2 hours, but for me it felt way longer. As I sat there wondering what they would have to do to me to get the IV in, having visions of being a toddler and them having to jab an IV into my foot, I felt terrible that I couldn’t tell Steve what was up. My phone was locked away with my clothes and other metal things, and Steve was at home with the Shmans since she is covered in metal things like collar and tags and leash and harness and stuff. I felt like one of those people who cannot be without their phone, but I didn’t want him to think anything catastrophically bad was going on.
I think I made the tech from CT laugh because when she thought she was about to have success, without thinking about it, I started whistling the first few lines of “Extra Ordinary” by “Better Than Ezra.” You know, “I got a little bit of hope, like a soap on a rope…”
Because I started laughing, I had to explain what I was whistling, and she laughed too.
I’m always curious about why they do things they do. I understood the ear protection, the contrast dye, the coil going around my head, but before they put the coil where it goes, they had me wear a little paper hat thing. I have no idea what that does, and have googled it and can’t find its purpose. I joked with Steve that it made me think of a kid’s party hat.
Like I said, squishy places apparently don’t mess me up like the guys in the two MRI songs above. But as I have discovered, my brain gets creative when I’m nervous or scared. Sometimes this creativity is good. But oh, sometimes it’s very very bad. For example, when the MRI is making its grinding noises and some of them sound like someone playing an electric guitar very badly, it is not good and not welcome for my mind to take those noises and make a melody out of them that sounds a little bit like “Terrified” by See Spot Run.
When I listen to that song again, it’s not even close, but when I was in there, my brain was sure that the melody it was creating fit perfectly inside the song…and then followed that up by thinking “‘Terrified’? Really?”
But at least I’m not the only one who tried to construct songs out of the rhythmic sounds of the MRI.
I’m curious if I’m the only one who ever wondered if you could put people in a trance with those rhythmic buzzes. I also couldn’t figure out how in the name of all that’s holy you could ever do functional MRI studies on people, i.e. how you could put them in this buzzing and humming thing and then ask them to do tasks. And what about that study where they got a guy who appeared to be in a vegetative state to watch Hitchcock movies and saw that he actually got scared at the appropriate parts. I guess, if a person is considered comatose, they’re used to going through MRI machines all the time, but for me that night, all I could think about was the buzzing and grinding. Would I be able to focus on anything else?
I never considered that I might have to sneeze when I was in there. But at about mid-way through the scan, I started to feel a really really strong urge to sneeze. Not just a little one, but a huuuuge one. I tried to fight it, really I did. I even tried to breathe the sneeze back in. That worked for a few seconds, but this sneeze would not be denied, so I tried to move as little as possible, but that was one huuuuuuuge sneeeeeze! And it screwed up some of the pictures, but thankfully they could redo that set and I didn’t end up in there for the full 20 ish minutes again.
While I was getting ready to go in there, and when I was in there, I could feel a part of me observing myself and noticing that god, am I ever a giant wuss. If I’ve had a test before, as long as it didn’t suck, I’m not bad. But whenever I need something new, despite my best efforts, I am a loud, obnoxious, nervous, question-asking, information-demanding, scared human being and I don’t like seeing it in myself. I realize that I need to have more empathy for other people who are needing something done and are all nervous, because let’s face it, if I were in their shoes, I would be a giant baby.
All in all, despite what probably looks like a long list of problems, it wasn’t a bad experience, but it has taught me once again that you can never ask enough questions. For example, I never dreamed to ask about the moving eyes. Because I was so worried that they loused up the scan, I called and requested to talk to the team lead a few days later to see if my involuntarily moving eyes loused it up and she said no, the images looked good, my eyes hardly moved, and I should only worry about it if they were doing an MRI on my actual eyes or something. Phew! I asked her if she could tell me when I should expect to need an IV, i.e. when I should chugga lugga some fluids to make my veins a little more cooperative. She said basically, if I’m getting another scan of ye old pituitary gland, I should expect the IV. Ok, also good to know. She told me that I can always ask the scheduling people if my scan requires dye. And I guess if I ever need this again and chugging liquids doesn’t help, I can try to negotiate with the scheduling person to see if I can have it done in the day because the folks on at night don’t know how to deal with people with miserable veins. This was told to me by one of the people trying to get my veins, so I’m not saying this as a criticism of the 3 poor souls who tried and failed…although I will still say the fishing expedition in my arm undertaken by one of them was not appreciated. Ouch youch ooch eech! I know what you were trying to do, but ouch youch ooch eech! I hope you enjoyed my creative language choices I used to try and avoid swearing at you. Also, next time you’re about to spear a blind person with a needle, please warn them first.
So yeah. I’ve now had an MRI. And you all probably think the magnets took my mind and ran off with it. Hopefully, this long and winding description of what I went through can help someone, entertain someone, or both. I’m still waiting to hear from my endocrinologist who ordered it, but since the scan was done a couple of weeks ago, I’m going to assume they didn’t find anything earth-shattering and world-ending. If I happen to need one of these again, I will try to be a much calmer, more prepared patient.
