Arctangential

I had a doctor I went to regularly when I lived in the southern part of Seattle, but since I moved up north I haven’t been able to find someone that I like. I’ve only needed to visit the doctor a few times; each time I try a new one I’m disappointed in some way and decide not to go back. It’s possible I’m a little bit too picky (people who know me are snickering at this, no doubt) but I figure there are enough doctors out there that I can afford to be.

Thus it came to pass that when I had my recent appendix situation, I visited a doctor I’d never met before. I liked him a lot; he was very personable and funny, and he explained the purpose and intent behind the different pokes and prods that went into his diagnosis. More importantly, he correctly identified my appendicitis quickly and was very clear that I had to go to the ER right away. While I think it would be a stretch to say that he saved my life with his astute diagnosis, he certainly helped me get the situation under control quickly and with a minimum of hassle and discomfort.

The only reservation I had about him came from his business card, which I grabbed from his office on the way out to the ER, in case the doctors there needed to know his name. After getting home from the hospital, I came across it in my jacket pocket, and noticed that under his name was the word “Homeopath”. I was shocked; he had seemed like a real doctor! He worked in an office building, had two receptionists and took my temperature with a digital thermometer. I didn’t really know what was going on, so I decided not to veto him on such a small thing, but rather discuss it with him the next time I was in to see him.

Which brings us up to the present. My knee’s been hurting lately, so I went to see him yesterday afternoon to have him look at it. While waiting in the front office, I took a look at his business cards, mainly to remind myself if they said “homeopath” or “homeopathy”, and was amazed to see that they said “family practice”. I wasn’t sure what to think, so when the time came I tried to approach the situation with as little bias as possible; I told him about the two business cards and simply expressed my confusion. He explained that he has two business cards, and that he must have accidentally given me the homeopathy one on my previous visit. My worst fears realized, I gritted my metaphorical teeth and asked him, with all innocence, what he could tell me about the subject.

The torrent of ridiculous codswallop that emerged from this man’s mouth was spectacular. He talked at me for over a half hour, telling me how exciting and special homeopathy was and how much he loved it. He told me about one patient who had chronic pain she described as “constricting”, for which he prescribed a preparation of python, neglecting to mention which part of the snake was used. Another patient had anxiety which she described as an “oval bug” attacking her with its legs and who complained of recurring dreams of her family dying in a house fire. For this he prescribed a preparation of “Coccinella Septempunctata”, or ladybug. (“Ladybg, ladybug, fly away home…”) Finally he told me about a schizophrenic patient he treated with a preparation of cannabis, because the patient described a fear of being separated from the universe and a sense of slow time.

I wish I was making this up. I wish I was creative enough to even be capable of making this up! His procedure seems to be to simply ask patients vague questions until they give him answers sufficiently specific to allow him to tie it back somehow to some kind of homeopathic preparation. Since he does this work at a naturopathic clinic (not, thankfully, from his “real doctor” office which I was visiting), his patients come predisposed to believe his rationales and the placebo effect makes many of them exhibit signs of a cure. Combined this with a healthy dose of confirmation bias and it makes the doctor feel like it’s something that really works. I eventually had to ask him for the name of a book just to get him to shut up.

So, long story short, I still need to find a regular doctor. Hopefully I’ll get lucky soon.

Oh, and for those who care, the problem with my knee is that I hyperextended either my right gastrocnemius. It probably happened when I was using a dangerously incompetent shoveling technique while digging a hole in my backyard. I’ve been icing it; it’s feeling a lot better.

So, for those who care, here is a rough breakdown of my recent appendicular situation: (times are approximate)

Wednesday, January 27th — I wake up in the morning with an odd pain in my side. I think at first that it’s a pulled muscle, but it doesn’t act that way. I decide to wait and see what’s up.

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While driving around yesterday, looking at houses, we came across a neighborhood where, in at least two different places, multiple streets came together all at once. Five or six at a time, they didn’t meet in simple geometrical patterns, but instead would all flow into great oceans of cracked asphalt, like dendrites entering the body of a neuron. There were no lane markings, no signs, no islands. I left me flabbergasted in a way that I don’t commonly experience.

As a gamer and a computer programmer, I generally find that I’m good at puzzle solving and at imposing order on disorderly situations. But this wasn’t a puzzle to me; it was a complete breakdown of my expectations for how roads fundamentally work. It was like as if the road suddenly went straight up the side of a building; I had no idea what to do. I knew which road I wanted to leave on, but I simply couldn’t figure out how to get there; did I drive straight across? Did I go around the edge? Was there some serpentine path that would be best? I felt like if I did the wrong thing, some SUV would come barreling in from another street and t-bone me into next Tuesday.

I think the essential thing here is that driving is dangerous, and to protect ourselves, we regiment it as much as possible. There are very few places that I drive where lanes aren’t clearly demarcated, turning orders aren’t well-defined and all you have to worry about it not rear-ending the guy in front of you and taking your turns at the right time. Once all of that was taken away from me, even though I was the only moving car in sight, I was paralyzed. I think it’s similar to the confusion people feel when moving from a right-side-of-the-road country to a left-side-of-the-road country, or vice versa.

I understand there are people who drive around in fields and other unmarked area all the time and they don’t have any problems, but that’s not me. Those folks are probably the ones who are always burning through a light just after it turns red anyways. I hate those guys.

In other news of yesterday, I accidentally bought two christian rock CDs in uncorrelated events.

Right now, I am straight-up, 100%, eating turkey spam.

I picked up a new phone the other day, using my new company discount. I’m pretty happy with it; it can go online and do email and instant messaging, play music and movies and even do GPS and mapping. I think it might also work as a phone, but I haven’t actually done that with it yet.

In the past I’ve pooh-poohed these kinds of devices, but now that I actually have one, I really like it. I might even start putting some movies on there to watch on the bus. Earlier today I was reading over lunch and came across a word I didn’t know. The book described some people’s amazement at discovering that their friend had two omphalos instead of the usual one. If I hadn’t been able to look that word up online with my phone, I would have accepted only the face value of that joke and not gotten the real humor.

Verdict: well worth the money. Also I can play solitaire on it.

We stopped by IHoP this afternoon for a little bit of brunch, after a strenuous hour of shopping at Archie McPhee. IHoP has a new special menu in support of the Horton Hears a Who movie, featuring green eggs and ham (natch) and “Who Cakes”, as pictured here. Now, I can imagine a few different reactions to seeing this food item available; one might say “That’s gross.” One might think, “Kids would like that, but no good parent would let their child eat it.” One might even think, “That’s a good treat for kids.”

I, of course, had to have it. And I did, much to the waitress’s surprise and Marika’s chagrin. It was really good, although pairing a lollipop with pancakes, as it turns out, isn’t a great idea.

I had a surreal moment Tuesday night. I went to Ikea, which is already a strange place on a Tuesday night, cavernous and mainly empty, like a giant mausoleum of particleboard furniture. As I wandered through the deserted spaces, looking for a RIAN and some OMNE, I started hearing the strains of jazz music. This isn’t too unexpected in a big store like this, of course, but what was odd was its directionality. Generally the music is piped in throughout the store, meaning you hear it at roughly the same volume no matter where you are. But, I noticed that the music got noticeably louder as I rounded a corner in couches, and then continued to increase in volume as I walked through bedding, home entertainment and finally kitchenwares. From here I could see the restaurant (Ikea has a pretty good restaurant in it, that serves some very tasty Swedish meatballs), and in the restaurant a jazz band playing. They’re surrounded by a crown of people and the drummer has just launched into an awesome solo. I stand and listen and when he’s done the crown bursts out in applause.

This is not the kind of thing I expect to encounter in a furniture store. Also, they were out of the thing I went there to buy. I’m going to go back next week, but not on Tuesday.

I was paying for something this morning, and I grabbed a $20 from my wallet. Scribbled one on end in ball point pen was: “Happy Birthday Mom”. I wish I’d kept the bill and taken a picture of it.

I was at a store the other night and I was working with one of the employees there to get some credit on some kind of rewards card based on some certificates I had. The details are entirely unimportant and even less interesting. What is important is that we did the whole thing and then he went off and then I did some shopping and then tried to spend some of the credit on some DVDs. However, there was no credit on my rewards card. I mentioned to the cashier that I just put credit on there, and he asks me who helped me.

This is where the trouble starts; I can’t think of how to describe this guy. I think I tend to focus on details about people rather than their overall look, and all I could think of about him were that his fingernails were very dirty, he had a huge piece of dead skin hanging off his lower lip, and he seemed very stoned. While these were all accurate statements, it’s not the kind of way you want to identify someone you don’t know to one of his co-workers.

In panic, I looked around the store, hoping I could just point him out, but he was nowhere to be seen. Finally I stammered, “He was – he was wearing a sweater.” This didn’t help much, and we both looked around the store for a while, but to no avail. Then he asked me, “Did he have curly hair?” “Yes!” I replied excitedly, although in truth I had no idea as to the nature of the hair in question, it seemed a reasonable answer. He walked off to a door marked “Employees Only” and stuck his head in. A moment later he backed out of the room and behind him was the man who had helped me earlier — with curly hair! He wasn’t wearing a sweater though; it was one of those fleece vests, over a t-shirt. However, nobody said anything, my credit was applied and all was well.

I got the DVD for Fishing with John which is wonderful and I encourage you all to pick it up.

The other day I was thinking about the time that Barry Bonds (I think it was) sneezed so hard that he broke his own rib. I wanted to make a joke about that, to say that I wanted to be even stronger than that, and to use a hyperbolic example to emphasize my point. I thought of a few lines, but I wasn’t sure which one was best.

First, I thought to expand the reaction to elsewhere in my body:

“I want to be so strong that when I sneeze, I break my own leg!”

Then, to elsewhere in space:

“…so strong that when I sneeze, I break somebody else’s ribs!”

Then, there’s the scatological example:

“…when I fart, I break my pelvis!”

And finally, the combination:

“..when I fart, I break somebody else’s arm!”

What do y’all think? Which one is funniest?