Just a friendly reminder to anyone who may have changed their phone number recently - if you haven't put your new phone number on the Do Not Call lists, do it now!

We changed our home phone number yesterday because we're changing our phone service plan. Just over 24 hours later, we got our first marketing call on the new number. *sigh* So I hopped on over to https://www.texasnocall.com/ and https://www.donotcall.gov/default.aspx and got that number registered. Unfortunately, it may take a while to get updated, but at least I got it out of the way.

And no, I'm not interested in supplemental life insurance, and certainly not a plan that I'm suckered into over the phone. Please...

I received a clean bill of colon health! No polyps, so nothing was removed, so I don't have to go through this again for another five years.

And I'm lucid, but bloody tired. What else is new...

2am. *sigh*

Normally, the only thing I'm doing at 2am these days is staring blankly at the insides of my eyelids while maintaining a slow, steady, deep breathing pattern. Not so today.

I am awake, you see, as the last step in my preparation for this morning's colonoscopy is underway. Four hours before I leave for the hospital is when I start this last step, and, alas, there will likely be no sleep the remainder of this journey.

Ahh, but what blissful slumber awaits me on the other side of the IV. That glorious moment when the drugs kick in and I become oblivious to what is happening around me for a good hour or so. Then I will begin my long path back to full consciousness which will elude me in its completeness until my alarm goes off Tuesday morning, and I head back into work. Memories of that voyage will become more and more fleeting as time passes by, but while I make that trek, I will believe I am in full control of my mental faculties. Fortunately, I will have enough awareness to recall that I must not, under any circumstances, make any significant life decisions until the following day.

Case in point: the last time I embarked along this odyssey, I seriously considered applying for a position as a youth choir director for a church in the area. Wow, that was close...

I once heard a definition of paradox - when the specialist agrees with the general practitioner. In my case, it was the specialist agreeing with the specialist.

OK, a bit of background here. Two weeks ago, I went in for my upper endoscopy (I know, I promised pictures, but I haven't had a chance to scan them yet - coming soon) and today I had my followup appointment. The abrasions they saw in my stomach are pre-ulcers, but not ulcers, and the medication I'm taking will help prevent ulcers from forming and repair the abrasions. The "interesting" spot they found in my upper small intestine is just an inflammation, not an infection. So, good news, right? Well, I asked about the colonoscopy I'd had a while back and the directions I got from the other specialist to have a colonoscopy every couple of years. She had found and removed a few polyps in my colon, and based her determination on that. So he called over, got the results from the biopsy of those polyps, and confirmed the date that I had the procedure done.

Well, it was two years ago, and the reason they recommended that was because the polyps were pre-cancerous.

Pre. Cancerous.

I think I remember the surgeon telling me that a couple of years ago, but the thing I focused on was the "colonoscopy every two years" part. So, I have my next colonoscopy happens in a week. Next Monday. Right after Thanksgiving.

Pre. Cancerous.

I know that when detected early enough, colon cancer is curable. And I know that if I'm having a colonoscopy done every two years, or more often if any pre-cancerous polyps are identified as "aggressive," that I shouldn't have any issues with not finding it soon enough. It's just the words that are getting under my skin.

Pre. Cancerous.

I'm way too young to worry about this kind of stuff. My wife is way too young to worry about me worrying about this stuff. So I'm trying to push it out of my mind. But that's going to be hard to do when I start my liquid diet on Saturday and drink all the lovely laxative nonsense that I have to consume on Sunday, not to mention the fallout from that, so to speak.

So long as I remain a "pre" I'll be perfectly happy, if not just a bit nervous. I'll gladly go through annual, or semi-annual, colonoscopies to keep myself in the "pre" stage.

Don't get me wrong, if I need to, I will become a cancer survivor. But I'd just as soon not go there. So I will do everything I need to in order to stay a "pre" in this lifetime.

Yep, I've been horrible about getting anything resembling a post up here in a while. No excuses, just haven't done it. And not much here today, other than to let the readers know I'm still alive and to answer the long-burning question: "What the hell was that pun you tried to make in the blog?"

As you may recall (hahahahahaha!) this post from October 21 announced that a combination of the two previous posts generated a pun, and apparently a very subtle one at that. So the first post was the Shock post, where I noted that a number of my comrades at my current place of employ were released. The next post, Awwwwwww..., expressed my "sympathy" to the Yankees fans who watched their team become the first team in history to lose a postseason series after going up in the series 3 games to none.

That's right. Shock followed by Awwwwwww.... Shock and Awwwwwww....

Get it?

Hey, I didn't say it was a good pun, just a pun.

Which reminds me of a story: There was a man who entered a local paper's pun contest. He sent in ten different puns, in the hope that at least one of the puns would win. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.

We survived the great snake scare of 2004. And I'm very proud of my wife.

I got a call from a breathless Anna this morning right after I got in to work. She had found a snake in the house. Going down the stairs. From the entertainment room to the foyer. And Tinker was fighting it off. That's what clued her in that there was a problem - Tinker hissing loudly at something.

My incredibly brave wife, not knowing what kind of snake it was, thought quickly, grabbed an empty box from my office, and managed, somehow, to get the snake in the box. And then outside. All without anyone getting hurt.

She also had the forethought to take pictures and send them to me so I could use the power of the internet to find out what kind of snake it was. I'm no snake expert, so I e-mailed the picture to a number of associates whom I thought might be able to help identify the snake.

Based on some of the responses, I thought we had a rattlesnake, even if it was a baby one. It wasn't until after I left work early to meet the fine gentleman from Cridder Catchers at the house to see if we had an infestation that I found the last few e-mails that indicated it was NOT a rattlesnake, but a rat snake. And that we don't have an infestation.

So, thanks to all of you who responded with the *correct* answer. And those who led us down the wrong trail, well, when we die a few days early, you'll know who's to blame...

So I had my EGD done this morning. You'd think that after having done this twice before, I wouldn't be nervous going into it. Well, I was, a little. Not so much about the procedure itself, mind you,but getting the IV. That was the worst part of the whole thing for me. I'm sure the nurse who put in the IV thought I was going to faint or something. Even though she did "deaden" the area first (ha ha), I still felt the thing, and it just sent my needle-phobic brain into overtime.

Fortunately, it didn't last very long.

So I'm back at home now after a very short procedure, and I'm much more awake than I was the previous two times I've done this gig. In fact, not only was I awake almost immediately after getting into the recovery room, but I even clearly remember the chat I had with the surgeon about what he found. And I was coherent enough to not only explain it back to him, but to everyone else who was in earshot.

Like I said, I was coherent. I just didn't have all my faculties back.

I'm still a little light-headed as I type this, and I'm certainly not going to even attempt to drive or anything like that today, but it's actually been nice that I'm going to remember most of what happened today later on. That wasn't the case my past two trips, and it's no nearly as unnerving as it would have been waking up tomorrow morning wondering if I needed to go back and relive the day past the point of going under.

Not that today's trip down anesthesia lane was completely without hiccups. The only other time I've gone under was when I had my wisdom teeth out when I was sixteen. I wasn't technically "under" in the anesthesia sense, but I certainly have no recollection of the bulk of that day after the preparation for tooth extraction started.

I got into the waiting room with Mom, and they gave me a Valium and two Vicodin by mouth, then shot me up with 10cc's of Demerol. Wheeeeee! I got to pick a music selection (Prince's "Purple Rain" soundtrack) to listen to while they dug in my mouth. Then they walked me into the room, sat me down in the chair, and gave me headphones to put on. As the music began to play, I began to fade, and fade quickly. The last thing I remember hearing was the dentist say "Now open..."

The rest of the day was a blur. I only have fragments of some memories. Mom filled in the rest, so I'm not sure how "accurate" that account is. Something to do with me demanding a vanilla shake from Burger King on the way home, because I "deserved it." And that while I know I shouldn't drive, I actually feel like I could. But the only really vivid memory I have was as I was supposedly "coming to" in the waiting room after the extraction. The dentist's assistant came in, and I thought she was pretty good looking before I went under, but in my drugged mental state, she looked like an Angel. Until she handed something to me.

"Here you go," she said as she handed me a small vial.

"What is that?" I asked, completely unaware of what was happening.

"Your teeth," she replied sweetly. "You stopped us four times during the operation to ask if you could keep them."

Oh, the embarrassment. At least, I think I was embarrassed. I should have been, but I was so out of it, who knows. Before the world faded to black again, I recall thinking that I had just lost any chance I might have had in asking her out. I could see me going over to her place for dinner, and after dinner she brings out vanilla ice cream, all the while commenting on how I kept asking to have dessert while we were eating.

I'm afraid I pulled something similar today. I wanted to get pictures of the scope when I left, so I made a comment about that to the charge nurse who checked me in. No big deal, right? Well, I faintly recall that the nurse who brought me back to the recovery room made a point of telling me where the pictures were. Something about me asking about the pictures several times after they pulled the tube from my throat...

Abdominal pains suck.

Especially when you don't know specifically what causes them. I've got a long history of digestive track problems, going back to stomach ulcers when I was 8 years old. What hit me Monday was something I haven't had happen before, which is why I went to the doctor first thing Tuesday. Fortunately, she got me through to a specialist this afternoon, and I now have an upper endoscopy scheduled for Monday.

I'll post the pictures. It will be fun.

Fortunately, I did get some medication that is helping, so I'm not in as much pain as I was earlier today.

This will be my third upper endoscopy. I've also had a colonoscopy, a flexible sigmoidoscopy, and an esophageal manometry in the last 6 years. For my money, esophageal manometry the one I most significantly don't want to repeat. The others I've been unconscious when I had them performed on me. The esophageal manometry, well, *shudder*.

As we get older, we get to go through more and more procedures that are more and more exciting and informative. And go places no object was really ever intended to go. I feel the same way about needles - *shudder*. If God had intended us to give blood, we'd have little valves on our arms that we could just squeeze open in time of need. One arm would have an input valve for getting shots and other injections, the other would be an output valve for donations and tests.

But that's just me...