'Doing Stuff'

The nice thing about my particular version of a personality is that it tends to attract (much as dark pants attract pet fur) the type of people who just aren't very good at bullshitting me.  Most don't bother to try, and the few who do are almost embarrassingly bad at it. This includes friends, enemies, lovers and various employees, most notably Doctors.  I won't tolerate a doc who pussy-foots around. I have neither time nor patience for it.

So anyhow, just before Christmas I started pissing black (or, more accurately, Sumatra-deep-roast-coffee brown) and assumed it was probably a kidney stone.  After all, I hadn't been kidney-punched since J.A.S. Fleming (AKA "Jas" or "Jazz") tagged me when I had his girlfriend in a chokehold during a bar-fight (long story,) which punch in fact made me piss red for most of a day, and not black at all now that I think of it, but you get the idea. 

Me After Taking A Piss --
Now THERE'S Something You Don't See Every Day

(Rabbit trail having nothing to do with anything: I probably knew once what J.A.S. Fleming's initials stood for, but we all pretty much agreed that they probably meant "Just A Shithead.")

I had one (a kidney stone, not a punch) back about 20 years ago, but there was no blood associated with it, and also it literally drove me to my knees and made me scream like Tom Cruz's daughter when the aliens snagged her in "War of the Worlds". Well, not quite that annoying, but the ER seemed pretty impressed anyhow.

The problem was that this time around there were essentially no symptoms, i.e., pain, to go along with the coffee production which is both outside my experience and the diagnostic guides.  Anyhow, after a week or so it went away.

Once we got past the Holidays, it came back for a day or two, so I finally got around to mentioning it to the Beneficiary, and she got all snotty about not telling her before even though it would have screwed up her Christmas and, I ask you, what would have been the point of that?

She was pretty pissed off and punched me hard in the chest, which she doesn't do unless I've scared her, and then she made me go see my doc, even though I'd had a physical only 6 months ago. I can't speak for everyone, but I find the relationship between my doc and I seems to work best when he's not rubber-gloving and alien-probing my nethers more than once a year or so.

So, I called him, and he had me report to a lab which sucked and drained about 4 gallons of blood and fluid out of me, and when he got the results, he didn't even bother to see me, but instantly (as in appointment 2 days later) referred me to a guy who specializes in plumbing and whatnot. It seems that along with the other low-grade weirdness, there weren't any elevated white cell counts anywhere, which meant something was going on that my body didn't recognize as an infection which, as they say, is "an anomoly." There was, however, "a lot" of blood in places it shouldn't be. It turns out that even when it isn't visible, it still stands out like a beacon to the lab. In fact, I'd truthfully told the Beneficiary that I'd submitted a pure golden sample with no visible oddities and whatever the problem was had gone away. 

The Doc said it was probably a kidney stone, but with the whackadoo symptoms and/or lack thereof, the possibility of the big "C" had bumped up the ol' Bayesian probability chart significantly.  As noted above, he's a low-bullshit kinda guy, which I appreciate no end.

I told the Next of Kin that everything was fine, and that I had to go talk to the specialist about my probable kidney stone. She knows what specialists are all about, though, so she took a day off work to go with me because she's long since resigned herself to the truth that when she's in a medical-related room with me asking questions herself, she:

(a) finds out a ton of shit that I may or may not remember to mention when questioned later; and,

(b) intercepts all kinds of paperwork (prescriptions, insurance crap, future appointments) that I often manage to lose, usually before I get out of the Doc's parking lot.

The specialist was a weird guy, but I liked him.  He started right off the bat telling me he'd talked to my Primary Doc, and had been informed that I was a full-blown victim of bullshit intolerance, which allowed him to much simplify his explanations, and asked if he was free to speak bluntly in front of The Beneficiary.  I told him to go ahead — it was her own fault for not staying home.  

This earned me another punch.

"Cancer or stones," he started out. "Those are the biggies. You've probably got one or the other, and my job is to try to eliminate one or both of them.  We're gonna 'Do Stuff'" (turns out he likes that phrase) "to make that happen. We are not going to get 100% answers, because for 100%, I'd have to 'Do Stuff' that is painful, has side effects, and is really fucking expensive, and it's just not worth it if we start off simple.  We on the same page here?" 

We were.

He set me up for a couple of things, one of which was CT imaging which was really fucking expensive, as advertised, but during which I dozed off, which is not the case in most other medical-related activities I've attended. 

When I was done, I asked the CT tech if she saw anything weird, which may not have been the best approach with a woman who'd just seen me with my pants down around my knees, but she just smiled and said everyone asked her that, but all she did was take the pictures and send them to my Doc, and he'd discuss them with me at my next appointment.  Terrific.  That means at least a couple of weeks…ah, well.

About three hours later, I got a call at work.  "Hey, this is Dr. (redacted). Got your CT results if you have a few minutes."

Let me make this clear.  The Doc tracked me down at work and was calling me three hours after a CT scan.  This is not normal…

"Shit," I said, "Yeah, I've got some time," (I chuckled when I realized what I'd said,) "uh, maybe. How bad is it?"

"The good news is you're not going to die. Well, not of this anyhow." He paused for a moment, and I could almost hear him shrug. "Something will get you sooner or later, I suppose."

"Well, that IS good news," I said.

"Yup. No lesions, spots, lumps, bumps, or other bad things. We're still gonna go in and look around, but there's nothing there.  No cancer."

"Cool. Except the 'go in and look around' thing."

"Yeah, well, part of the game. Once we're done with that, we're done altogether, though."

"So this whole pissing Starbucks thing just came up at random?"

"Oh, hell, no," he said. "You got a kidney stone.  Big fucker, too.  C'mon over and we'll 'Do Stuff' to it."

"Can we just 'Do Stuff' to it when I'm there for the look-around appointment?"

"It's still not bothering you?"

"No," I said, "my back's a little achy, but no problem."

"Yeah, Doctor (also redacted) said you have a high pain tolerance. OK, we'll 'Do Stuff' to it when you come in for your appointment.  But, Dude, with your marginal pain response, if you feel anything hurting you, you really need to come in right away — if you feel it, something is really wrong."

Yeah, like I ain't heard that my whole life.  Sigh.

Anyhow, it looks like I may live after all. (shrug) OK. I'm good with that.

That's two, Death. You only get three swings and you're out — I get to live forever.  That's the rules, right?  Come and get me you grinning shithead.  That's me over here laughing at you...

In Our Next Episode: The Doc "Does Stuff"