I know it’s a terrible picture of Aremid. He looks like he’s dying. But that’s what I captured when I felt like I was dying, and he hopped up and sat next to me in bed. With his eyes firmly closed, he looked like he was trying to send me some healing powers as if he were Yoda.
I should try to balance the gloom and doom of my posts with one of these every few days.
I suppose that I should post something along the lines that the surgery went fine. They got rid of the stone. I’m still sore because I’ve got a stent in me. I hate the word “stent”, as it’s made me queasy for years anytime I’ve heard or read of someone needing one for something. Presumably, I will find out next week if my kidney function has rebounded to non-end-stage levels.
I wish I could write something triumphant about how this crisis is over and how great it feels. The problem is, things were, at least in my mind’s prison, quite grim before all of this happened, for reasons that I’ve implied but never explicitly stated on this site. After a little sharing of blunt truths, I’m not sure I want to go back to writing as merely the bitter, complaining, self-deprecating, misanthrope. I’m more complicated than that. But if I just let it all hang out there, what will be my purpose in doing so?
No more video blogs for now. Those were pretty awful.
I need lots and lots of sleep right now…
But that’s being overly morbid. I should be fine. For those with some curiosity but not 8 1/2 minutes of their lives to waste on an inept video blog, here are the highlights, Ã la CNN.com:
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- CT scan on Friday found a kidney stone
- Removal of kidney stone should reduce discomfort, boost kidney function
- Toastie loves Duke Medicine, at least until after successful surgery, after which he will thoroughly trash them
- Laproscopic surgery scheduled for 3pm today
- Toastie’s video blogging skills leave much to be desired
8:04PM – mickey rooney sighting! he’s still alive!
8:06PM – cannot hear a darn thing on this red carpet show. hope main show doesn’t have this problem. looking forward to hearing jon stewart
8:10PM – shaun robinson to ellen page- you just tuned 21, have you had a chance to become a drunk, high, pantyless hollywood starlet yet?
8:38PM – jon stewart is making me laugh too hard..i’m gonna bust a kidney
9:00PM – steve carell just had an amusing little bit…his ‘get smart’ with anne hathaway might be good
9:15PM – i actually haven’t seen anything nominated this year, for the most part….but i did see ratatouille, which was oscar-worthy, indeed
9:20PM – ugh, i hate how they cut people off mid-speech at to save time when there are inevitably numerous bloated production numbers
9:25PM – aggravated to see this duke medicine commercial for the 10th time, implying they actually give a crap about patients
9:30PM – bar is really low for presenters when the rock gets to give an award…just seems like there’d be more a-listers to pick from
9:35PM – salute to binoculars and periscopes…brilliant
9:40PM – bee montage – not funny…this is part of show that really drags…best animated short
9:55PM – actually disappointed not to see halle berry and judi dench…jonah hill and seth rogen banter not particularly funny
10:20PM – best actress upset…academy likes musical bios… glad ellen page didn’t win…sick of all the juno press…it was ok movie
10:30PM – another duke med ad…empathy, sympathy, compassion..???!!!!..f*ck you duke medicine…
10:40PM – “falling slowly” from movie “once” performed, remember my young pathetic self when i wasn’t angry at world, just unimaginably sad
10:50PM – nice 80 years of oscar montage…heavy use of dragonheart theme, one of best uplifting themes
10:55PM – i get teary when a 98-year-old wins an oscar…hope the music doesn’t play him off…classy, classy moment
11:10PM – song from Once just won, need to see it…jon stewart:”that guy is sooo arrogant” just busted another kidney
11:20PM – suzanne pleshette.deborah kerr.heath ledger..not a big year for big-name film star deaths…little action on death applaus-o-meter
11:25PM – found irony in us military fighting for our freedom giving award to doc film about dying woman suing to get pension for life partner
I just took a look at my home with Google Maps’ Street View. Damn, they’re good. It looks like the image is from August or September, whenever I still had my new Boston ferns healthy. I had lamented that I did not have a photo of them. Thanks to Google, now I always will!
I had seen folks posting street views of downtown landmarks but it hadn’t occurred to me that residential streets were all covered, too. Never again does one need to try to describe one’s house. You can see a detailed photo of every home on the route. Pretty nifty. And creepy. Mostly, nifty. It’s not like I was outside sunbathing when the Googlemobile came by. That would be horrifying.
No, I’m sorry, sweeetie. I can’t change it. I’ll lose my job.
This is what a staffer in the Duke Hospital Radiology Department said to me after I, after 90 minutes of agony, requested that the television in the waiting room be switched from Fox News to anything else.
So I listed to Fox’s panel of analysts mock the the enthusiasm around the country for Barack Obama as if people who might be inspired by someone refreshing on the political scene were as crazy as…a bunch of Benny Hinn apostles (my analogy).
Then I heard about a half-hour on sexual predators, which seems to be the favorite topic of an loyal Fox News viewer. Slow news day? What’s going on in sexual predator legislation? And the story is always delivered with mock sincerity by one of those provocatively-clad blonde Fox NILFs.
And then, did you hear how low The New York Times has sunk, accusing John McCain of having had an affair? What gutter journalism by those liberal smear-mongers! Of course, the “fair and balanced” fact that Fox News ignores is that the Times story did not accuse McCain of having an affair. It simply reports that McCain staffers were very concerned that McCain was engaged in an inappropriate relationship. The Times wasn’t trying to make it a smear story about sex. The story is about how unstable McCain’s ethics might be, in direct contrast to his crusades for lobbying and campaign-finance reform. Those who worked closely with McCain had reason to believe that McCain was behaving inappropriately. That’s a legitimate story.
Anyway, anyone who either volunteers to watch or is subjected to watching Fox News on a regular basis without other news sources truly is getting a distorted view of the world. I don’t care if those with conservative leanings want to watch it. I do care that any place of business would force its patrons to watch it, let alone a health care facility where keeping patients calm and relaxed should be a top priority.
So, who is the big shot at Duke Radiology responsible for the don’t-turn-off-Fox-News-in-the-waiting-room policy?
I don’t know why I’m doing is. I’m certainly not forcing anyone to watch…
I need all the wake-up calls I can get in the morning. So thank you to Victoria Peterson’s volunteer staff for calling me at 7:45 this morning to let me know that there’s a rally for her candidacy this weekend. I had no idea she was running for something again. But if there’s an election for something, she’s got to be in it. You’ve got to admire her perseverance. Ms. Peterson is angling to become a County Commissioner this time around.
I know she’s always talking about the need to get work for Durham men. She got me to get up and come to work this morning. Please don’t ever call me at 7:45 in the morning again, but it was ok this one time…
And the sound is bad, too. I wasn’t aiming for awards.
