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liver still good
Wednesday, April 26 2017
This morning I had the second part of my first-in-decades medical exam at the place out on Zena Road. Today's appointment lacked all the filling out of paperwork, which was nice, though it seemed to replicate and extend everything done in the first part. Again, they measured my height and weight (70 inches tall, 176 pounds), took my temperature (97 odd degrees), measured my heart rate, and took my blood pressure (88/124, which is actually kind of high). Additionally, I was told to go into the bathroom to provide a urine sample. The first cup I grabbed had somebody's name on it already (it had either been written by an old man or a barely-literate child) so I selected another one. There were no tops to put on them, so I came out with the cup in my hand. The nurse's assistant clearly didn't want me to do that, but it hadn't been obvious that I was supposed to put my sample in the unlabeled cabinet, which had a door on its backside for a member of the staff to access the same cabinet and retrieve the sample. Perhaps these idioms are widely understood by people who go to the doctor on a regular basis. But not me!
The only other invasive thing in my examination was an EKG. I took off my shirt for that. There was also a hearing test and quick examinations of my ears and throat. I opted out of the vision exam because I'd recently been to an eye doctor. I made a point of telling the main nurse doing the examination that I drink a lot of coffee as part of my work as a software developer and that this gives me stomach complaints and trouble sleeping. I was hoping she would suggest I try prescriptions of Adderall and Ambien. Unfortunately, the only idea she had was that I cut back my coffee consumption by one cup a day. As for the result from my bloodwork, everything checked out normal or better than normal except for Vitamin D (which is often low for people at this time of year). My cholesterol was particularly good, probably because of my vegan diet, and indications were that my kidneys and liver were performing normally as well. Gretchen's concerns about my drinking were the main motivation for this checkup in the first place, so it would come as an enormous relief that my liver seems healthy. Then again, I suspect Gretchen's idea of what constitutes heavy drinking is well within the range of a healthy lifestyle.
Though my blood pressure had tested high, I nevertheless celebrated my healthy liver with a bag of salted peanuts, a bag of Fritos®-style Stewart's corn chips, and a large cup of Stewart's richer roast coffee. Sadly, the drought of things I would ever want to buy continues at the Tibetan Center thrift store, which I didn't have to go far out of my way to get to on the way home.
Back at the house, Nancy had come over to walk her dog Jack with Gretchen, Ramona, and Neville. Later, well after Nancy left, her husband Ray would make an unusual appearance. Nancy had been trying to extract the head of a tick embedded in a swollen bump in Ray's back, but was unable to dislodge it. So Ray wondered if I would have a go at it. So I got a number of tools, including a scalpel with a serrated edge (I collect such things), sanitized them with alcohol, and proceeded to operate on Ray's back. It's a strange expanse of stretch marks amid a regular pattern of little red dots that have no obvious explanation. But that little black dot, all that remained of a tick, was hard to dislodge. Fortunately, Ray couldn't feel much of what I was doing due to diabetes-related neuropathy. I felt like I was really digging in there, occasionally sawing away at tough bits of skin, but the whole time Ray was carrying on a conversation with Gretchen. Eventually I gave up on the serrated scalpel and used Ray's pocket knife. Ray is something of a pocket knife fancier, so of course I'd never seen this particular knife before and it was in perfect condition, with a razor-sharp tip. It allowed me to get in under that black fragment of tick, slice away any of Ray's tissue that it clung to, and then pick it off with a fingernail. Mission accomplished! I put a dollop of antibiotic salve on the site and covered it with a bandage. Now Ray could do his shift at the restaurant he manages without worrying about a piece of a tick being lodged in his back.
Late this afternoon, I took a break from my workday in the remote workplace to go over to the Brewster Street house to be there during the delivery of a replacement refrigerator. Gretchen had also scheduled some potential renters to come over and look at the house at around the same time. But it seems she'd thought the house would be further along by that time, because it wasn't in much shape to show. The tiles had been put down in the bathroom, but they hadn't been grouted. The sink hadn't been hooked up, and there were lots of little details in need of attention. But, in terms of first impressions, the biggest offenders were the floors: none of the wood floors had been finished or even cleaned, and there wouldn't be any carpet until May 5th. Gretchen ran around cleaning windows, and I used a wet rag to clean the porch and front steps, which were filthy from tracked drywall dust. Eventually the refrigerator guy arrived, carrying the refrigerator in a dump truck. He and I managed to wrestle it into the kitchen through the back door (as always with such things, it was good the door was no narrower than it was). While that was happening, Gretchen was chatting with a younger woman she hadn't met yet in the house to the south. Gretchen had met her parents earlier, and they'd seemed nice. But now the daughter was giving Gretchen static about the fact that we were renting the house out (evidently Gretchen had used that convenient story about us maybe moving my mother into the house some day). From there, the neighbor took a turn for the racist, talking about how "whole tribes" had been living in this house in the past.
Eventually the two potential renters arrived, one after the other. The first was a nurse at the nearby hospital who was looking at the place with her identical-appearing cousin. She seemed like a good fit, though her teenage daughter and (occasionally) her grown son would be living there as well, which would probably mean a lot of people hanging out. Still, that was a better setup than the next person who came by, who would be bringing four other adults. That's a lot of wear and tear on a hot water heater. Neither of these people seemed to be concerned about the state of the house.
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