Today is the 4th July, which is a public holiday here in the U.S. (officially, it’s\u00c2\u00a0Independence Day, although everyone just calls it “4th July” which makes me think they’ve forgotten exactly what they are celebrating).\u00c2\u00a0 It’s probably the biggest public holiday of the year, which means that just about everything grinds to a halt.\u00c2\u00a0 Except for me;\u00c2\u00a0 I’m still in work.\u00c2\u00a0 My colleagues couldn’t understand why I (a Briton) wasn’t out celebrating Independence Day, too.\u00c2\u00a0 “Well, what are you celebrating independence from?”\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0I still think we should push for 200 years’ worth of back-taxes…<\/p>\n
The up-side to working on a public holiday is that the roads are clear.\u00c2\u00a0 Today’s commute took me a mere 15 minutes (compared to anything between 30 minutes and an hour on the average day).\u00c2\u00a0 I was able to tear along the five-lane section of the I-10\u00c2\u00a0at 80 mph – in the slow lane.\u00c2\u00a0 And still<\/em> there were other cars\u00c2\u00a0doing less than that, sat in the outside lane, with absolutely nothing\u00c2\u00a0in the three lanes in-between.\u00c2\u00a0 I know you can overtake on the inside over here, but\u00c2\u00a0that’s just bad driving.<\/p>\n Anyway, I’m only in\u00c2\u00a0the office\u00c2\u00a0for a couple of hours, to attend\u00c2\u00a0the weekly conference call\u00c2\u00a0that pretty much drives all of my work (so I can’t really miss it).\u00c2\u00a0 I would have dialed in from home, but the chance of getting the kids to be quiet for an hour is nil, and a constant background screaming doesn’t sound too professional on a conference call.\u00c2\u00a0 “What noise?\u00c2\u00a0 No, I think that must be on your end.\u00c2\u00a0 Or a crossed line.”<\/p>\n Plus, I need to make up time for the couple of hours I took off yesterday afternoon to go to the doctors.\u00c2\u00a0 I have (had<\/em>) a small ‘growth’ on my neck that has been irritating the hell out of me for years (it’s positioned perfectly to rub against my collar),\u00c2\u00a0and I wanted to get it removed now that I have health insurance that will cover it (less the $15.00 co-pay).\u00c2\u00a0 I was secretly convinced it was the tip of some kind of cancerous tumor, and they’d have to cut out everything within 6 inches of it, but\u00c2\u00a0the doctor announced it was a nothing more than a ‘skin fleck’ (and the second one she’d cut off that day) and lopped it off in a flash.\u00c2\u00a0 “Hmm, you’ve got a couple more, here”, she announced, navigating around my neck.\u00c2\u00a0 “Let me just get them at the same time”.\u00c2\u00a0 Several flashes of the scalpel (and all of this without so much as an anaesthetic wipe) and I looked as though I\u00c2\u00a0had\u00c2\u00a0taken a barrel of buckshot to the neck.\u00c2\u00a0 I could see she was scanning the rest of my torso for additional work (I would have thought she was admiring my physique, but for the facts that (a) it’s not worth admiring, and (b) she’s gay), so I quickly whipped my shirt back on before she could find anything else she didn’t like the look of, and I was whittled down to the bone. And that was it, all done.\u00c2\u00a0 Thirty minutes in the waiting room, and two minutes ‘under the knife’.<\/p>\n But then the doubt started to set in.\u00c2\u00a0 What if this lump (affectionately christened ‘Little Dirk’ by the family – who once wanted to draw a face on it and make it a little cape, even though it was only maybe 3mm across…) was really the source of all my ‘power’ (I claim creativity<\/em> – it may not be a super-power, but it’s mine…) Like Samson’s hair, or Supererman’s cape.\u00c2\u00a0 What if I was now rendered lexically impotent, and unable to write?\u00c2\u00a0 What if I started feeling like a twin where one of them had died and the other never recovers from the loss, and also dies soon afterwards?\u00c2\u00a0 Or if I still got phantom twitchings where Little Dirk used to be, like amputees claim to get?\u00c2\u00a0 I did consider asking the doctor to let me have it, in case I needed to get it stitched back on, but by the time I turned round it was already in a yellow ‘biohazard’ bag, on its way to the incinerator.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh well, time will tell…<\/p>\n The doctor also told me that I needed a full medical exam, as I hadn’t had one in a while (since I can’t remember when, in fact).\u00c2\u00a0 I agreed, but now I’m wondering why she thinks this is necessary – What did she see when she was checking out my torso?\u00c2\u00a0 Did she\u00c2\u00a0find something else when she ex(or)cised Little Dirk?\u00c2\u00a0 At worst it’s going to be like my recent trip to the dentist: my teeth were fine and I just went\u00c2\u00a0for a check-up\u00c2\u00a0because (again) my health plan covers it.\u00c2\u00a0 But now I have tooth ache and they’ve decided they\u00c2\u00a0need to extract the two wisdom teeth I have left.\u00c2\u00a0 It will be the same with this medical exam – they’ll start poking around (ooh, Nurse!) and dislodge something in my delicate ecosystem, and then\u00c2\u00a0I’ll be dead within the month.\u00c2\u00a0 Mark my words.<\/p>\n Actually, I did have a kind of mini health assessment when I joined the gym a couple of months ago, and they didn’t find anything untoward, so I may be OK.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, they said that I had the fitness level of a 37-year-old (I’m 40), which I was rather pleased with.\u00c2\u00a0 That said, the doctor weighed me yesterday (which they always do – along with taking your blood pressure – regardless of what you go in for),\u00c2\u00a0and I’ve apparently put on 8lbs since my assessment at the gym – on a diet of caffeine and stress – how is that possible?\u00c2\u00a0 Now, if it turns out that Little Dirk weighed 8lbs, I’ll be right back on track! May he rest in peace.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today is the 4th July, which is a public holiday here in the U.S. (officially, it’s\u00c2\u00a0Independence Day, although everyone just calls it “4th […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,22,73],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-commuting","tag-medical","tag-paranoia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":235,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions\/235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}