January 8, 2005 Mostly Medical When I came home tonight, I was eternally grateful to see that someone had shoveled the driveway. Only about a quarter of an inch of snow was left, so I grabbed the shovel and scraped that down, then tossed around a metric buttload of ice melt, so that the driveway won't be slippery tomorrow morning. While I was moving cars around, I noticed a little blue light flashing on and off under Mom's dashboard. Also, her overhead light didn't go on when I opened the door. I figured something must be wrong with the remote starter I got her for Christmas, but after fiddling with the remote controller (locking and unlocking the doors, starting the car and putting it in gear), the light went off and the overhead light worked when it was supposed to. So I consider it "fixed." For some reason, that small amount of activity has tired me out completely. It's not like I had a taxing day. I had no billable time at work. The only thing I did for one of the consultants was resize and print out a photo of a friend of hers for her bridal shower. They were going to play "pin the tiara" on it. I asked her if she needed tiaras for the game, and she said that she had some, but they were the most pitiful photocopies of ugly tiaras that I've ever seen, so I whipped up a bunch of nice ones on cardstock and she went away a happy customer. I was just happy to not be spending my Saturday at any function that included "pin the tiara." The rest of the day was filled with lots of conversation between Laurie, Tamra and me about a number of subjects. We started in on salaries. Tamra said, "Did you know that if you take your hourly rate and multiply it by 2, you'll have your annual salary?" Laurie, skeptic that she is, immediately brought out her calculator and did the math. Turns out that the calculation almost works, but is slightly off. Tamra then recinded her earlier statement, saying that she might have heard that it was a good way to estimate one's yearly salary. Which it is, but that wasn't her point. We talked about something medical, which led Tamra to mention that George Washington died because he was bled too much by his doctors. Tamra is a savant when it comes to presidential trivia. She doesn't know a thing about their politics or policies, but she can tell you what Dolly Madison's waist size was, or how it was FDR's mother keeping her son away from germs that caused him to contract polio later in life. We don't know if all these facts are true, but she says them with conviction, so we choose to believe her. The medical conversation centered around the fact that I showed Tamra the Medic Alert pendant I got for Christmas, advising anyone doing an emergency medical procedure on me that I'm allergic to latex. Being allergic to latex is one of those weird things that people tend not to believe when you tell them. Especially if you're dating them. Men I've met have told me that I'm a liar and am just looking for an excuse to get out of having to practice safe sex. I think that on the appropriate date, I should purchase a balloon and demonstrate what happens to my hands when I hold onto it too long, then let them decide if they want that to happen to other parts of my body during an intimate moment. For the record, I didn't find out that I'm allergic to latex because I was holding onto a balloon for too long. It really wasn't a pleasant experience, gaining that tidbit of biological information. It's a tremendous pain in the neck, having a latex allergy. When I go to the doctor, the nurse who checks my records immediately has to not only find the other type of gloves they use, but also has to remove any latex gloves from the room I'm staying in. I'm not that sensitive, but I guess it must be the law or something. Laurie has a squishy stressball on her desk, and I was playing with it one day until she said, "Hey, isn't that made out of latex?" I immediately ran to the bathroom and washed my hands. I felt like an obsessive-compulsive, but you never know. At any rate, it's good to have the pendant, because if the act of putting on dish gloves makes my hands break out in a rash, I'd hate to see what would happen if someone ever had to do emergency surgery and was rummaging around my insides with latex gloves on. Somehow, I don't think that having a tremendous rash on my pancreas could be fixed with a little bit of Benadryl. While I'm on the subject of medical issues, I finally have a dentist. Something I haven't had in a couple of years. Mom and Sean go to see an awesome dentist who had a heart attack a number of years back and decided to limit his practice by not taking in any new patients. I've heard about the wonders he's done for both Mom and Sean, and have asked several times if I could get them to ask if he'd take me, as an exception to his "no new patients" rule. No such luck, until this week, when Mom told me that the dentist was taking a limited number of new patients (her theory is that his practice consisted of mostly older people, and a number of them died off). She gave me his phone number and told me to mention her when I spoke with the receptionist. I called, and after I gave the receptionist my name, she said, "You must be Brenda's boy!" I said yes, I was, and asked about the limited number of patients the dentist would take. She said, "Oh, hon. Anybody who's an immediate family member of one of our patients will automatically be seen by the doctor." If I had known that two years ago, I could have had regular cleanings! Checkups for cavities and root canals! Advice on how to floss! I know I could have gone through 1-800-DENTIST, but I did that the last time I saw a dentist, and the guy was horrible. He gave me a root canal which hurt like hell, because of the fact that novacaine doesn't work on me all that well. He kept saying, "You can't be in pain, I've already killed the nerve!" I guess it was just my imagination kicking in every time the drill came close to my mouth. Anyway, I now have an appointment with the eye doctor and the dentist within this next month. I'll either be very proud of myself or realize that I'm going blind and will need dentures due to my procrastination in getting appointments with either. At least both of them will believe me when I tell them about my allergy.