Monday, January 09, 2006

Year in Culture

Slate has Year in Culture review from multiple contributors. Highlights and lowlights both. A cool digitization link is provided by music critic of old wax cylinders converted to downloadable files, music, voice recordings of Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Taft, also Ernest Shackleton talking about surviving south pole etc... I love this kind of stuff and was sidetracked for a bit. Others include Pinter's Tom Cruise-Today show like moment at the Nobel Prizes Anti-American rant and former Poet Laureate Pinksy on South Park's contributions.

I have been slow in posting. I had to make a trip to hospital last week for the embarassing reason of a having a piece of food stuck in my throat. I thought it would take care of itself but it did not and I found myself in Mercy ER with an IV in my arm , wearing a gown, attempting to maintain composure chatting with student xray tech while waiting for the Xray doctor to show up. This was not the simple procedure I had envisioned. Each new person that came into the room I started adding on to the bill in my head. I felt like that Woody Allen line from Manhattan..."You're so beautiful, I can hardly keep my eyes on the meter." Anyway all's well that ends well. They may have actually found one of the reasons that I suffer from frequent bouts of heartburn, a stricture of esophagus or something. I will find out more today when I go back for an endoscopy. I don't even want to think about the bill for that one. Still, if I was in Canada I would probably still be waiting in line to get the piece of food removed from my throat. In the meantime like Mom said, taking small bites and chewing food thoroughly.

6 comments:

El Duderino said...

Been there done that, not fun. Make sure they stick the endoscope in the right end of you GI track or it will be just another night for you.(sorry I couldn't resist)
If you're like me they'll tell you that you have GERD and to lose weight, eat better, get more exercise etc. The procedure itself will relax any strictures you may have so you will feel better pretty quick. They may try to put you on the Purple Pill which will coordinate nicely with your Little Blue Pills. Don't do it, you'll probably be fine if you don't eat after seven p.m.

scruffylooking said...

So, how many, "having something stuck in your craw" jokes have you heard lately?
Depending on how much you made last year, Mercy has some paperwork you can do where they pro-rate you I think...at least they used to. There's also state paters but first you have to apply for medicaid and get turned down. Actually, Iowa is a good place to be sick without insurance. Sorry, if this is long-winded, it's just the hospital business office worker in me. Apparently, I can't stop doing the job I hated and quit years ago.

Unknown said...

Thanks for the tips. Doc gave me some samples of Protonix to take for a month before the endoscopy. The life style list is as predicted and mostly good things (lose weight, stop smoking, drinking etc). Then the bastards say stay away from caffeine, citrus, choclate and tomato products. Dude, why avoid the pills? not happy about taking them for rest of my life...

El Duderino said...

Where does it end? They have a pill for everything these days. If you're not carefull you'll end doa on the shitter like Elvis. I would work to 9:30 come home eat half a pizza and lay down to sleep, who'd a thunk it might not be good for you? A little care and prevention and you should be fine. I decided against the pills because of the side effects, lycanthropy, triorchidism, iridescent micturation and bilateral enucleation. Keep in mind that I'm not a doctor nor do I play one on TV.

scruffylooking said...

Yeah, all those acidic foods. A guy I work with has the acid reflux bad and everytime he does something to piss me off, I loudly pretend to write an email to his wife telling her that he's drinking tomato juice. Then he shoots me with rubber bands.
Oh, my friend Kyle wanted to let you know that the sax playing muppet is named, Zoot. He tried to leave it in the comments but he had technical difficulties.

Unknown said...

Zoot! thanks... and here is the link for GWB Hates muppets...

http://tinyurl.com/7vvnn


(cross commenting?) strange...