So Wrong
Last week I got a call, completely out of the blue, from my doctor's office. The message was that they wanted me to come in for some more blood tests. Huh? A month or so ago they took blood to check my B vitamin and folic acid levels, and that was followed up by a letter saying those were all normal. So what's with the cold call? Slow day in medicine, need to drum up a bit of extra business? You want fries with that injection?
I call them back, leave a message, and hear nothing for twenty seven hours. Now they call back with a detailed request but with only minimal explanation. They want me in for an IPEP and an SPEP test, the voice says, and the diagnosis is anemia.
What diagnosis? When did this happen? Why was I not informed?
In any case, Ricky has an existing appointment this afternoon for a vaccination so I'm piggybacking my own blood giving on his time. I'm really hoping someone will come and talk to me and explain the why's and wherefore's. But maybe they're just going to take my blood and send me on my way. I'm a vegetarian so an iron deficiency wouldn't seem unlikely although there is iron in the multi-vitamin I take each morning.
Are there more nefarious causes of anemia? I don't know if I want to know yet. If they're happy keeping me uninformed, who am I to argue?
So I don't know if this frame of mind (it's been going on all weekend) has something to do with this, but I can't keep from laughing at the weekend's tragedy in New Delhi. Clearly we have a cultural bias wholly inappropriate to world culture where simians are concerned. In other words, I keep seeing how the poor vice mayor of New Delhi was attacked and killed by wild monkeys.
Why some deaths are contemplated more lightly than others I do not know. The same day I was hiking this weekend a recently married couple were hiking in another part of the mountains. They sat on a tree trunk to eat their lunch and it somehow broke, and then rolled over them after they fell. The wife was dead at the scene and the husband walked away.
This is sad. This is tragic. No grins, smiles, or winks are in danger of deforming my features. But a gang of wild monkeys attacking a grown man and tossing off his balcony to land on his head? I'm going to hell, I know, but I'm smiling as I type this and damn it I'm trying not to. The only defense I have is that I openly admit that a gang of rhesus macaques would likely kick my ass, too, and that possibly, just possibly, anemia affects the mind as well as the red blood cells.
Note that I'm staying away from all banana jokes for at least a week.
I call them back, leave a message, and hear nothing for twenty seven hours. Now they call back with a detailed request but with only minimal explanation. They want me in for an IPEP and an SPEP test, the voice says, and the diagnosis is anemia.
What diagnosis? When did this happen? Why was I not informed?
In any case, Ricky has an existing appointment this afternoon for a vaccination so I'm piggybacking my own blood giving on his time. I'm really hoping someone will come and talk to me and explain the why's and wherefore's. But maybe they're just going to take my blood and send me on my way. I'm a vegetarian so an iron deficiency wouldn't seem unlikely although there is iron in the multi-vitamin I take each morning.
Are there more nefarious causes of anemia? I don't know if I want to know yet. If they're happy keeping me uninformed, who am I to argue?
So I don't know if this frame of mind (it's been going on all weekend) has something to do with this, but I can't keep from laughing at the weekend's tragedy in New Delhi. Clearly we have a cultural bias wholly inappropriate to world culture where simians are concerned. In other words, I keep seeing how the poor vice mayor of New Delhi was attacked and killed by wild monkeys.
Why some deaths are contemplated more lightly than others I do not know. The same day I was hiking this weekend a recently married couple were hiking in another part of the mountains. They sat on a tree trunk to eat their lunch and it somehow broke, and then rolled over them after they fell. The wife was dead at the scene and the husband walked away.
This is sad. This is tragic. No grins, smiles, or winks are in danger of deforming my features. But a gang of wild monkeys attacking a grown man and tossing off his balcony to land on his head? I'm going to hell, I know, but I'm smiling as I type this and damn it I'm trying not to. The only defense I have is that I openly admit that a gang of rhesus macaques would likely kick my ass, too, and that possibly, just possibly, anemia affects the mind as well as the red blood cells.
Note that I'm staying away from all banana jokes for at least a week.
posted by Rick Ollerman at 10:10 AM
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