Thursday, April 22, 2010

It’s a Boy!.... And Another Boy!... and a Large.. um.. Small Girl!

You will note that I have added a new subtitle to this blog; i.e. “And the Renal Road to Happiness”. Inasmuch as my ferritin level is now at 48.8 and inasmuch as I will go three months before I have it checked again, the blog contents will be even more bland and vacuous than they generally are. I won’t be tripping down to the Infusion Center (where they all hate me because I dragged a Surveyor from the parent company through one of my linguistic grist mills). I will not see “Doc Holliday” for another year (I am not the cash cow I used to be). The Lab Tick will not be drawing my blood as frequently as in the past (and we were getting on so well!). So what to do? Jabber and nonsense about kidney disease.

I decided to go with “Doc Wurlitzer”, a nephrologist who works down at the Central Utah Clinic, a place that looks something like a Swiss ski chalet. It is just west of the Infusion Services office. The Lady in Red and Chester were watching from the roof of their building as I pulled into the other parking lot. There was a lot of shouting and stamping of feet as I walked into the chalet; I believe that they miss me already.

The receptionist was pleasant and was anxious to hook me up to a siphon. “We need a quart or two to find out why you are here…. Oh! You have such lovely veins!”

“That’s what all the girls tell me. I know why I am here. I have too much creatinine, and other stuff that I can’t pronounce properly, floating around in my blood. Here is the paperwork from “Doc Holliday’s” office. The analysis is no more than a week old.”

She looked at me blankly for a moment and then said, “Oh, so it is. What a disappointment! You have such lovely veins…my, my, my…”

I asked her when I could see the doctor. She said, “Oh, not for about six weeks. He is a busy fellow with all of the degenerative kidney disease going about. But I wouldn’t worry about any of this for a while. According to this creatinine report, we could schedule you for April 17, 2040 and you would still get in under the wire.”

“So you will let me know what I am to do next.”

“Yes,” she said, with eyes fixed on the inside of my left elbow, “I will let you know what you are to do next…. You have such lovely…..” I slipped out of the side door and ran for my life.

About a week later, I received a phone call from the Imaging Department of the Clinic. “Hello, Dr. Beeblebrox? Dr. Wurlitzer’s office called us to have you come in for an ultrasound on your kidneys and your bladder. Could you drop by tomorrow sometime?”

I said that I could.

“In anticipation for the ultrasound, could you please drink 64 ounces of water a half an hour before you come in? It is easier to see your kidneys if you are bloated.”

I sloshed into the Imaging Center about 10:30 the next morning. Scylla and Charybdis were waiting for me. I have no idea why I came up with those two names (neither one of them looked like a whirlpool and they only had one head each). Scylla was an intern (or an extern; the medical students can’t seem to keep their “-terns” straight). Inasmuch as she was new to the game, she was the one who was tapped to slather the gel on my left side. “Oooooo! You have such lovely……”

“Now cut that out!” I shouted.

They fiddled around for about an hour; sounding me out here, then sounding me out there. Finally, Charybdis said, “Well, it’s official. You have twin boys. What are you going to call them?”

“Tom and Bob,” I replied.

“Oh! Thomas and Robert. How lovely!”

“No, Tom and Bob. Our relationship has been and will continue to be rather intimate and informal. How are they doing, by the way?”

“Well looky here! Do you see these blue dots? That is blood coming toward us. Do you see the red dots? That is blood going away from us. We use the latest in Doppler technology here.”

I was impressed. “What is that little white smudge right there?”

“Oh! That’s Andromeda.”


Then they pounced upon my bladder. Remember the 64 ounces of water they had me drink before the procedure? The whole gallon was inside. After a while Charybdis said, “Would you like to relieve yourself?”

Silly girl!

Then they commenced again to check out how my bladder was doing. “It’s smaller!” the two shouted. “Wow! Yippy! Wonder of Wonders! Miracle of Miracles!”

Finally, once the exuberance settled down, I said, “I have come up with a name for my bladder. I am going to call her ‘Ginger’.”

The most that Scylla and Charybdis could tell me was that my kidneys looked fine. When degeneration is in full bloom, Tom and Bob would have looked like shelled walnuts. The boys look like fluffy little tribbles. Ginger was big in the beginning and then became small after I returned from the bathroom. What could be better than that?

7 comments:

Judie said...

I am so pleased to hear that those three parts of your internal organs are working perfectly. You are home free. I may have mentioned it during one of our phone calls, but my left kidney as two exits. The problem with that is it fills up my bladder faster and faster. (I guess that's what it does). Anyway, no problem with the degenerative disease that I know of. I see the doctor next month, so I will ask, but quite frankly I don't want to know if there is anything else wrong. I'm happy with what I know and I'll deal with it.

Anonymous said...

Ha ha ha! Tribbles...

Trillium said...

You sound like you are enjoying your maladies too much. Just like a bunch of old ladies talking about their latest surgeries.... (LOL)

Katscratchme said...

Yeah... Dad is EXACTLY like a bunch of old ladies... :D

Zaphod said...

Remember, I'm what you have got to look forward to.

Rebecca's Oasis said...

I'm gald you are doing fine.

You are going to be around for a very long time :)

Chris said...

Dude, what is up with all the chinese posters? Ah, I let my Chinese go down the drain, so I won't be able to decipher it for you. Instead, I will ingumble myself.