VISITING ALL THE DOCTORS!

I'm so tired of going to the doctor.  I mean, I'm glad that there are doctors out there that can basically digitally peel you apart and see what is going on inside of you, and I'm glad that I have access to those doctors, but I feel like I've had more than my fair share of them this year.

I told you about my visit to the Doc-In-the-Box in January because I thought my heart was glitching, and about that visit leading me to the hours long stress test that I had to take to "ease my mind."  Well, just the other day I had a regular visit with my GP.  Just routine stuff, but I had to have blood work and a chest X-Ray beforehand as part of it.  Two days before my appointment, the doctor's office told me they saw some shadowing on my X-Ray and that I needed to go and have a CT scan of my chest.  This probably would have scared me if they'd told me they found a spot, or a lesion, or a ferret on it, but shadows can be caused by almost anything, including leaning too close to the machine-thing.  So I go to have the CT scan, which was a lesson in patience, because you have to wait SO FREAKING LONG before you get to go back there.  I was given an IV (which thankfully didn't squirt my blood across the room this time) and injected with what felt like hot coffee, but what was (I was assured) contrast dye.  That part was really weird because they told me the dye would feel hot in my veins, and then make me feel like I'd just wet my pants.  They were NOT lying about that.  It also made my liver feel like I'd swallowed some lit birthday candles.  Then I was passed in and out of a scanning doughnut, which spoke to me in a creepy robotic voice "Breathe In. Hold Your Breath. Exhale."  I kid you not, it was like the weirdest Disney ride you could ever imagine.

So that was over, and I was fine with it.  Certainly it would ease the doctor's mind about any lung shadows he may see.  I'd had pneumonia after all, so I was sure that's all that it was.  The same thing happened to Steve a year or two ago, and they'd had him convinced it was inoperable lung cancer, but thankfully it was just because he'd had scars from an earlier bout with pneumonia (which he'd never been treated for because he's stubborn and likes coughing a whole lot.)  So, at my actual appointment I was told everything was fine. Blood work was fine and my CT scan just said I had a nodule (just like Steve) from my case of pneumonia.  He even showed me the report that said it was a lung nodule with a very low chance of being anything scary.  I'm paraphrasing, of course.  All he said was that I have to lose weight, of course, but when do I not?  The only other complaint I had was that my side had been hurting quite a lot. I thought it was my gallbladder, and so did my doctor.  So the next monday he sent me to have an ultrasound on my abdomen.  Fun stuff, that ultrasound.  Imagine getting covered with jelly while someone rolls a Tonka truck all over your stomach. It was weird.  Later that day (and way sooner than I'd imagined) they called me to tell me that my ultrasound was fine, although that doesn't explain the pain, but for all I know there really is a ferret in my spleen.  She also told me that the doctor went back to look at my CT scan and wants me to see a pulmonary specialist after all.  The same one as Steve went to, actually, and he says that doctor is a bit of a bastard, so that should be fun.  Now I have to go see yet another doctor who will probably have me scanned or jellied or some crazy thing.

Somewhere in there I also had a dentist appointment where they told me I need to have my crown replaced in early May and I have yet another, unrelated to anything else thus far, doctor's appointment I have to go to in either May or June (depending on when there is an opening.)

Seriously, I'm very, very grateful that I have access to so many doctors and insurance to help pay for these visits, but this is an embarrassment of riches. Getting old sucks.

TESTING

I'm testing something out, here. We're fine.  We're all fine here, now. Thank you.  How are you?

OMG! LET'S CANDY!

You guys, I have a problem.

OK, it isn't a real problem. Not like a "I need a kidney" problem or a "I've Been Locked In a Closet for Two Days and Need To Use the Bathroom" problem.  Nonetheless, it's a sort of problem.

I like candy.  I like it a lot.  It used to just be chocolate that I'd hoard and eat whenever no one was looking (although I don't really consider chocolate candy, per se. It's too important for that,) but now it's all kinds of candy.  I blame Steve.  I'm not sure why. 

Anyways, you can look at me and tell that I like candy, but my fondness for it has mutated recently. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been buying Japanese niche candy. I've bought that kind of candy before and I've even talked about it on this very blog.  But now I have a whole lot of it. More of it than a grown up, child-free woman should own all at once.  I'm not sure why, either.  It's like a compulsion! I think it has to do with the Japanese videos that I watch. So, in a fit of what I can only assume is some kind of fever, I Amazoned myself a whole lot of strange Japanese candy.  Some of it is straightforward, pull-it-out-of-the-box-and-eat-it kind of stuff and some of it is way more complicated.  No, seriously, you have to mix things and put things in the microwave.  Also, to be honest, I'm not exactly sure what some of it actually is.  It's all written in Japanese, so I can't even Google it.  I'm just going to have to do my best.

Of course, I'm bringing you all with me!  I can't help it.  I feel less guilty about buying candy when I can talk about it on here, so you will get to see it all, if not taste it all.  Yay!  So stay tuned for what I've dubbed:

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) If you follow me on Twitter, I'm sure that there are times that it looks like I'm having a one sided argument that consists of nothing more than me berating someone.  I'm sorry.  Actually, that's sort of what it is. There are times when I am in a situation where I'm hearing things that aggravate me so badly, but I have no business chiming in to say what I'm thinking out loud.  Could I just not say anything at all?  Probably, but I'm kind of mentally wired to express myself, and if I don't, I might explode. True story. I usually do this with my Twitter account because not many people who annoy me enough to be the subject of one of my random tweets knows I've got an account.

Ugh. It doesn't make me feel very nice, but it's better than saying mean things to people who don't know I can hear them, right? RIGHT?

2) We had such a fun visit with our Georgia family!  Steve and I drove over to Waleska to spend the weekend with the Pucketts and McGees!  Amy's birthday was on the 28th, so we combined a birthday visit with a "fix Aunt Brenda's computer" visit!  We had a really great time!  We got there Friday evening, and had dinner and birthday cake with everyone.  I brought a special candle for Amy's cake that sounded really dangerous, but also fun.  It was one of these:

These are very cool, but because I'd never used one, I didn't know what it would do exactly.  The instructions said it would spin, play music, and there is a sparkler in the middle that lights all the candles on the petals.  It says to keep everyone about 3 feet away from it when you light it, so I was expecting a small explosion to happen when it was lit!  Alas, it was a little less spectacular than the video I saw, but still a cool candle.  Also, it didn't set anything on fire, which is always a plus!  I'm also extremely jealous that my niece, Katie, has such pretty purple hair and I can't dye my own to match! :)

Saturday we visited and had dinner with almost everyone for Amy's actual birthday-day dinner, and visited some more when we got back.  Sunday we got to visit with everyone else again until we left.  It was very chill and a lot of fun to see everyone who could be there.  I also got to meet/play with Beau, Aunt Brenda and Uncle Garry's giant black lab, who is the size of an elephant, but still only a puppy, really.  He's so sweet!  We played tug-of-war, chase, and sticks, and we brought him chew-sticks, so he was our friend immediately.  It made me miss Butler and Bear a lot, but I guess if I can see Beau occasionally, I'll be ok!

Steve and I left around lunchtime and drove into Atlanta to eat at Big Chow, which is one of his favorite restaurants.  From there, we went to IKEA, which was both terrifying and fun.  It's terrifying because the place is huge and maze-like, and I always have a sneaking suspicion that you can get lost in one and never be seen again.  It's fun, because they sell a lot of neato stuff, and now I want to buy a lot of furniture that would look terrible in my house.  The line to pay was it's own special brand of hell, though.  You think it's bad when Wal-Mart has 230 checkout lanes and only 3 cashiers?  Imagine that in a place with eight times as many people who are buying furniture. We stood in line for a solid half-hour. Boo!

After that, we finally got on the road and headed home.  We got stopped for about an hour by a huge traffic jam just outside of the city because of road construction, but once we got past that, it was gravy.  Good times.

3) I still don't like my hair.

4) I swear, I think my co-worker just barked.  The pastor barks all the time (well, howls like a beagle, but that's his thing.) My other co-worker never barks.  I'm scared.

5) I'm bummed.  I may have mentioned this a while back, years back even, but one of our former pastors went missing several years ago.  He was the pastor at my church when I first joined, and while he didn't marry Steve and me, he did say a blessing over us at our wedding.  He was a very sweet man and I liked him a lot. However, his wife was a horrible person.  I mean that.  She was not good a being a person.  They'd been at the church for a year or so when she told him she was going to visit family, and then surprised him with a divorce.  He literally had no idea it was coming.  It rocked him, obviously. So much so that he was placed on leave so that he could get himself together.  It wasn't a mean or malicious thing the church did by placing him on leave, I swear. It was really in his best interest, because he wasn't handling anything very well.  During that time he just up and left. He didn't tell anyone, including his own mother, where he was going and no one had known where he was for about 11 years.  He was a legit missing person, with the police involved and everything.  We found out yesterday that he had gone to Mexico to became an English teacher, which was a relief, because we had imagined all kinds of horrible things.  However, as glad as we were to know where he'd been, the reason we had been contacted was because he had died last September.  They didn't tell us how, other than he'd been sick.  I just hope that he was happy when he was in Mexico.  I hope he found some kind of relief and joy and I hope that whatever sickness he had didn't make him suffer. He deserved better than he got, I think.

I hope his ex-wife has nightmares.