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The consultation with the surgeon today didn’t go off as planned, because, as the office clerk told us, the surgeon “had a big … heart … um, thing … come in this morning, so he’s still in surgery.”

They tried calling us, but we had left early because we had to pick up my scan films (pictured right) at the radiology department, so we missed the call.

It wasn’t a total loss, though, since we went to my regular doctor’s office to so over my FMLA forms, and, as luck would have it, got an unscheduled audience with the doctor himself.

We tend to get results whenever my wife is with me. She’s known them for a lot longer than she’s known me, and besides, people just like her better as a general rule.

But for whatever reason, this was the first time I’d spoken directly with the doctor since he ordered that first x-ray — since before we knew there was a mass on my lung.

It was reassuring to get to talk to him face to face, with having to go through his nurse. He reassured us that what I have isn’t lung cancer, and that the surgery “should” clear it up, and that the mass is the reason why I haven’t been able to kick my pneumonia.

So we have to back tomorrow to the surgeon, and, assuming we get to see him this time, maybe we’ll be able to set a date for the surgery.

And get this mess over with …

As I mentioned yesterday, I finally broke down and get an MP3 player. I might have still been mulling over the decision a year from now if it hadn’t been for my suddenly looming hospital stay.

For my usual lifestyle, the occasional shuffling of my numerous CD’s is an acceptable inconvenience, but that would prove unwieldy during the numerous hours in which I would be sitting around killing time waiting to be realeased.

Anyway: I decided on the Creative Zen Vision, which is much cheaper than an iPod with the same capabilities. It’s also thicker and clunkier, but I don’t have to look hip for anybody, so I went for the bargain. Pretty cool screen, huh? I took a picture of the whole thing, but it’s black (also pretty cool) and doesn’t show up well, but trust me: It looks hsarp as heck.

I’ve loaded almost 7 gigs of music onto it so far, that may be sufficient for now; a playlist will be forthcoming.

We got back the results of my latest tests, and it’s turning out about the best we could expect it to: The tumor is malignant, but its operable, and they didn’t find cancer anywhere else. One surgery should (we hope) take care of the problem.

We’ll be consulting with the surgeon on Monday, and I’ll probably go under the knife within the next week. My wife has looked up this kind of procedure, and says that recovery time requires a hospital stay of six to ten days, which is a super bummer. I was hoping for more like two, three tops.

On the other hand, they might not want to operate while I’ve still got this killer sore throat and sinus infection. Seriously, it feels like I’m being stabbed in the throat.

But anyway, I made up my mind that I would take the plunge and buy an MP3 player if and when I needed a hospital stay, so I did that on Friday — a Creative Zen Vision — and I’ve been loading music on it today.

But more about that, including pictures, tomorrow …

Holy freaking cats it got cold this morning! That’s to be expected since it’s winter, and it barely got down to freezing, but here’s the bizarre part: Yesterday it was almost 90F, and today the high will be in the high 30s.

That’s quite a cool-down.

Maybe that’s why I’m getting a sore throat on top of everything else …

But it might be our last hit of winter for the year, so I’m making vegetable beef soup tomorrow for the second week in a row.

Because any time after March and it gets too muggy in Dallas to make soup …

My receptionist has been out the past couple of weeks, so we’ve been hobbling along with a series of temps, each more dud-like that the last.

We’ve put up with the temp we’ve got today since Wednesday, but just barely. She’s got a bad attitude and little capacity for learning.

I usually tell our temp receptionists to send the calls to me if they don’t know what else to do with them, but they invariably abuse the privilege and I end up getting calls from anyone who doesn’t ask for a specific person.

I’ve told our current temp three times that if somebody calls and asks who is in charge of any particular thing, that means that they’re trying to sell us something, and their calls should therefore be sent to Purchasing — which is the department that PURCHASES things.

Each time, she said she understood, but apparently not.

Today I was walking by and she said, “Hey, this guy wants to know who’s in charge of purchasing computer equipment …”

I keep telling myself that Cristina is coming back to us on Tuesday …

At the first of the year, I asked New Boss in Training to approve the routine 2006 Holiday List before I distributed it to the managers. He looked at it and said, “Presidents’ Day?? Why do we take off on Presidents’ Day?!”

But before I could respond that he had mistaken me for someone who is consulted on decisions, he was on the phone to the High Holy Corporate Office to try to get that day off grouped with another holiday, like Christmas, when people actually need an extra day before or after, instead of just on a Monday in February.

It makes a lot of sense, which is probably why our bureaucrats shot it down.

And that’s the story of why we still get this next Monday off.

Be sure to relate this story to your children, and your children’s children, so that it may continue to inspire many generations to come.

I can think of all these little bits I could blog about tonight, but writing those up would take an hour and a half, so instead of blogging I’m going to do this tonight:

This is a partial screenshot from a song I’m working on with Screenblast Acid 4.0. This one is really just a very pedestrian reggae track, because I’m still trying to get the hang of this looping thing.

Plus, I still haven’t installed the Acid Pro 4.0 that I got on Ebay last week, so I should probably do that tonight too.

So come back tomorrow, I’ll post some then.

PS: Still no news on the medical tests, in case you’re checking in for that, but thanks for your concern …

It’s been two days since I’ve whined about my problems, so here’s what I had for breakfast yesterday:

That’s right: Not one but TWO barium smoothies — almost a full quart.

Actually they weren’t that bad, especially when you consider the alternative barium delivery method.

Anyway, check out the larger picture to see the detail on the bottle, including the appetizing photo of every kind of delicious berry — next to the diagram of the glowing digestive tract.

Apparently, this was a “barium sulfate suspension” — kind of bland, but surprisingly free of medical aftertaste, and the berry flavoring was a nice touch.

Plus, I hadn’t eaten for over 12 hours because of the CT scan, so it was easy to pretend I was drinking a milk shake, and I wasn’t hungry any more after I gulped down both bottles.

These were to prepare me for the CT scan, but the nurse who was doing the nuclear scan on me beforehand had me drink those halfway between her two scans that morning, since they had to be in my system for an hour before the CT.

That was good because it got me back to work a little earlier (hey wait, what am I saying …? )

And I thought, Hey, these smoothies beat the heck out of getting shot up with iodine like last time.

I later found out that the iodine was not out of the picture.

But back to Nurse Nuclear: I didn’t see any warnings on the label, so I drank them, but afterwards I asked her if there any side effects.

“Just diarrhea”, she said.

JUST diarrhea???

Then she said, “Why?”

“Oh, gee, I don’t know, just trying to plan the rest of my day …”

Like picking the route back to work that had the highest frequency of bathrooms …

SO ANYWAY, back to the serious stuff: I haven’t heard anything back on the tests yet, but results may begin trickling (eww) in by tomorrow. The future hangs in the balance. Everything will pretty much tip one way or the other.

I’ll probably have an anxiety attack every time the phone rings, so for those of you that know me personally: Don’t call me at work tomorrow unless it’s absolutely necessary, so I won’t freak out unnecessarily …

And so we come to the end of another Valentine’s Day. We usually don’t like eating out on V-Day, because most major restaurants in the Dallas area are even more crowded than usual on that day, plus a lot of places (Japanese hibachi places seem really bad about it) jack up the prices on a special “Valentines Menu”.

Local restaurants in our little burb usually don’t do that, so I talked her into going out to Mi Case Tex-Mex — the place where I pick up takeout every week — and we were really glad we went, because there was another couple from church there, one we didn’t know a whole lot about since we’re still kind of new, and they invited us to sit with them.

So we had some great conversation for a couple of hours, and discovered we have a lot in common, including playing music, and liking a lot of the same TV shows.

So it was a really nice change from our usual Valentine’s Day, where I pick up more upscale takeout than usual, and we spend the rest of the evening hiding from the crowds.

(And PS: Hi to Donette and Dave, our newly much-better-acquainted friends, who I hope I can add as my newest readers!)

It’s that time of year again — guys, I hope you’re doing right for your ladies this year, and not grabbing some cheap piece of crap at the 7-Eleven on your way home on Valentine’s night.

For your own sake.

As for me, I’m blessed to have a frugal wife, one who doesn’t believe in spending $60 on flowers that will be dead within two weeks. I don’t want to show up empty-handed, though, since she’s worth every penny I could spend and more. So luckily Kroger (a regional grocery chain) has for the past few years set up a tent in their parking lots several days before the big day, and they have reasonably priced flowers: these beauties were a bargain at $20.

And she doesn’t mind it so much when there’s a bargain involved.

I had my nuclear injection and scan today; I have my second of these scans tomorrow, but I get to start the day with another CT scan for which I get to fast, and you know by now how well I function with no food, which is not at all.

As far as I can tell, these nuclear tests are all about this — not like I can make heads or tails out of what I’ve read …

I rolled up my sleeve and the nurse said, “Let’s see where we can find a good vein”, tapped twice on the inside bend near my elbow, then promptly went for the bony back of my hand.

I said, “Look harder in the first place.”

But she had no intention of going in at the place with plenty of muscle and fat to absorb the shock.

Still, she was pretty nice. Her name was Yolanda, and we took my mind off the pain by talking about dogs. She has a Norwegian Elkhound and a sweet-natured Rottweiler. I told her about Schotzy and how weird he’s getting in his old age, and showed her Molly’s picture on my cell phone.

Dogs: Is there anything they can’t do?

So anyway: I got to leave for four hours, so I grabbed a Boston Market Roasted-Sirloin-Family-Meals-for-Four (so we could have some leftovers for the week) and had a nice meal at home with the wife.

Then it was back to the belly of the medical system beast. This happy little fellow at the right was my home away from home for about 20 minutes.

It really wasn’t so bad — I even got to keep my clothes on! No hospital mini-dress! — and it was almost totally silent.

But it kind of freaked me out, in a claustrophobic way, when the metal plate was lowered over my face within three inches of my nose. I was real close to going into a panic and scrambling out of there, but they let me turn my head to the side so I could forget that feeling that I was an old car in a junkyard crusher.

Hey, I’ve got a short attention span.

=================================

So anyway, enough of that. My last tests — of this series — are tomorrow.

Let’s just hope they’re the last tests of anything for a while, but that sounds too good to be true …

For now, though, you can see more pictures of today’s adventure here.

Ive got more tests today — this is the day that they light me up, as my wife puts it — they fill me with nuclear material of some kind, then I go back at 4 so they can see where it makes me glow.

I don’t know what the side effects are or anything; this is one of those many instances where the health care system says, “Don’t worry your little civilian head over it; we medical professionals will do the thinking for both of us.”

I’ll also be dropping of my jug on the way …

So anyway, I’m off, more later …