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Battlestar Neurotica

(from my journal, scribbled yesterday afternoon)

Things to do while waiting for yonder doctor (the one with the scythe and the hooded robe) to call you into his office …

  1. Think of all the Internet research you've done since last month's consult.

  2. Focus on recurring words in said research: injectable medication, side effects, needle biopsies, pain, failure, death.

  3. Squirm a little with that month-long queasy feeling I’ve had about the whole thing.

  4. Wonder what’s wrong with everyone else in the waiting room.

  5. Think they’re all in a club that I never asked to be a member of.

  6. Notice that the guy two over in the blue t-shirt is kind of cute and wonder if he's scared too.

  7. Remind self that “knowledge is power” and try to reframe impending death sentence into a ‘call to living!”

  8. Roll eyes for getting all Louise Hay on myself.

  9. Wish I was back in Africa totally ignoring/forgetting all this real world stuff.

  10. Remember Never Let Me Go and realize we're all fated to the same thing, one way or another, and think I'm not ready to be a donor yet.

  11. Say hello again to the queasiness.

  12. Become annoyed that that my appointment was 20 minutes ago and I’m still here in this ugly, fluorescent-lit waiting room writing this list. He’s always running late.

And then he called me in and I had to stop scribbling.

So the good news is that I don’t have Hepatitis C. That’s what I was really freaked about. As much as I admire Pamela Anderson, Anita Roddick and my dear friend TL, I really didn’t want to play that game.

My ALT went down from 143 to 104 in a month, so things are going in the right direction. Normal is <40. He asked again if there was anything I’ve changed or taken in the last year that could have caused the spike. Honestly, there’s nothing really. I went off all my meds a couple years ago when I moved here to give the old liver a rest.

You’d have thought it’d have acted up before I left New York, what with all the prescription and, ahem, occasional recreational chemicals I was taking. My internist and psychopharmacologist back in the states were very Rx happy and I had good prescription plan.

Lesson learned — stop taking all your meds and your liver gets unhappy, albeit a year later. Doesn’t make sense, but that’s why they call it practicing medicine.

I did go on a new reflux pill about six months ago, so I’m off that now for something different. Maybe it’s viral and it’ll sort itself out, so I'm back on a variation of the old cocktail. We’ll check it again in another month. The doc seems much less concerned and I have a heightened awareness of what it could or couldn’t be, so I’m in a much better head.

So much better that I decided to treat myself to a movie on the way home from the doctor. Sunshine had been Time Out's film of the week a couple weeks ago, and I'd been wanting to see it. As I walked by the cinema, I noticed it was just starting so I went in on a whim. You know how they say it's good to be spontaneous? They lie. So did Time Out. It was just silly. A ridiculous mix of Alien and 2001, with an overwrought topsy-turvy ending that could have lasted 15 minutes less and nobody'd have noticed. Plus, they used a "save technique" that I'd just seen on Battlestar Galactica two days ago.

And to add insult to injury, you see Cillian Murphy's chest but not Chris Evans'. That. Is. Just. Wrong.

Anyway ....

I had an extra long, very good sleep last night. First one in about a week. The two days nights before were spent fretting on the sofa. Couldn’t sleep at all. When I wasn’t making myself crazy with web research on painful liver failure, I was watching the entire third season of Battlestar Neurotica Galactica in a vallium-induced semi-calm. [SPOILER AHEAD] The episode where everyone was dying and being quarantined was especially enjoyable, and then Laura’s cancer comes back at the end, which made me really sad. [/SPOILER}

And the last ten minutes with the four of them in the ‘all along the watchtower’ room ... WTF??

Enjoy your weekend everyone and take care of yourselves ... you don't want to end up waiting in a doctor's office making lists. And if you're going to see sunshine, do it outdoors, not at your local cinema.