The Thing That

Thursday after work I got to the gym and planted myself on the cross-country machine thingy with a good view of TV #2. It was set to the Lifetime channel and there was some made-for-TV movie about a paroled rapist returning to his home town and the fear and mistrust and lynch mob mentality that his arrival stirs up. Or something like that - I arrived for the last 20 minutes so I may have missed some of the complexity of the story. I'm pretty sure the rapist - who seemed to be the hero -- was played by the guy who was the sheriff on Twin Peaks, the one who was in love with the foxy Asian mill owner. Anyway, it was very engrossing, the perfect kind of moralizing trash to keep you on the treadmill, sweating away the pounds.

Friday I got to the gym around the same time. Hit a different machine but watched TV #2 again. Still tuned to Lifetime, showing another TV movie. Apparently the 4-6pm slot on Lifetime is the "Sex Offender Movie of the Week" time period, coz I came in just as a teenager was telling his mom and dad that, ten years before, he had been repeatedly sexually abused during satanic rituals at his day care. The mom was played by Pam Dawber, the latter half of Mork and Mindy. I swear to god the dad was the same guy who played the rapist in Thursday's movie.

It'll be a bitter disappointment if, when I gym it Monday after work, the same dude isn't starring in an emotionally wrenching yet ultimately uplifting tale about buggering sheep.

I think I just found my new favorite writer.

Michealangelo packed a bag with his art pencils and art pad. He packed various other art things into the bag and stuffed some snacks in there as well. He pulled on his trench coat and hat. He had pants on also with a pair of custom made loafers. He picked up his bag and walked out the door. He had a nice beige Mercedes that he had bought not too long ago.

Quel est le privilège des morts?
Ne plus mourir.

Normally I can't stand Bill Maher but his take on the Gray Davis recall in the L.A. Times is dead on and pretty funny.

And the obvious solution: A Viennese weightlifter. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Finally, a candidate who can explain the Bush administration's positions on civil liberties in the original German.

Cancel yer plans to dance on my grave. The tests came back normal. So, I've been exposed to TB (like millions of folks) but ain't infected. I cheat death yet again!

Out with the old, in with the new. Following Jack's lead I've gone over to backBlog for comments, though I'm still holding out hope that those wacky Klinks find their way back. Incidentally, I picture this family as being direct descendents of Colonel Klink, all of 'em (little kids included) with that monocle and sour face.

Still waiting to hear from the doctor about my chest x-ray. Meanwhile, the red welt on my arm is itching like a motherfucker. It does occur to me that if I hadn't gotten it into my stupid head to do some kind of good I would never have been tested and would probably have lived out my life without knowing that I'd been exposed. That's what I get for being a nice guy. Never making that mistake again.

The Klink Family seems to have overloaded, leaving our comments unviewable. This is also causing blogs with comments to load incredibly, painfully slowly. I just commented out my comments and now my blog is loading fine...

Man, and I thought my cancer scare made for morbid comedy. I get to Group Health yesterday afternoon, wait an hour to be seen, and then the nurses start arguing about whether I've tested positive for TB or not. My forearm, where I was injected, has a red circle the size of a quarter, so clearly something's up. But that's not important, it's the raised mesa of flesh within the red circle that counts. The nurse at Elderhealth had measured that hard little bump at 8mm across, enough to perhaps be positive but small enough for there to be doubt. Now these two Group Health nurses are bickering over how big the bump is. "That's never 8mm," insists one. She takes a pen and starting at the edge of the red circle draws a line toward the center until she hits raised, hard flesh, then repeats this three times at 90 degree intervals to map out the edge of the mound. It looks like she's drawn target lines, the kind you see when you look through the scope of a marksman's rifle. And she presses hard which doesn't feel very good.

We're standing in the office area, not even in a consulting room, and the nurses are still squabbling about the size of my bugbite-like butte. The Elderhealth nurse didn't pull the 8mm figure out of head; she took a ruler and measured it. Don't they have rulers at Group Health? I see them conferring with a mysterious, unseen figure seated at a cubicle. She pokes her head out -- and it's my doctor. How oddly humanizing to see her at a desk in a cubicle. She looks at my arm, asks if I might have been exposed somewhere. I tell her, as I've told the Elderhealth nurse and the consulting nurse on the phone, that I was in Korea last year. Like them, she seems satisfied that this is grounds to consider me exposed. She sends me off to have my chest x-rayed. Now all I have to do is wait for the results.

Elderhealth isn't really an old folks' home coz nobody lives there. Their website describes it as "adult day-health care that helps frail elders and people with chronic illnesses to remain living in the community as independently as possible. " There's several locations in the area but the only one that's open on the weekends is down in Columbia City. Conveniently, the 48 bus stops just across the street from our apartment and, on the other end, stops just across the street from the place. The whole trip takes about 25 minutes.

I showed up on Saturday at the appointed time, 12:30. An inbetween stage - lunch was finishing and the "clients" (as they're called) were preparing for bingo. Pat, the volunteer coordinator, showed me around then sat me down for an interview. I filled out the application, gave her my references, and then it was off to the nurse for my TB test. Ever had one of these? They inject you with a small dose of tuburculin, then you go back two days later. If you have a bump like a bug bite then you test positive.

****

I started writing the above blog this morning. Since then, Melle picked me up on my lunch break and took me to have the followup done. Guess what? I tested positive for frigging Tuburculosis! Just called my doctor and they told me to come in immediately for a chest x-ray. It doesn't mean anything, of course, it's highly probable that I've simply been exposed to TB, not that I'm infected. But the nurse on the phone asked me if I'd experienced night sweats or coughing fits...and the answer to those is yes. So I'm taking the rest of the day off to go get checked out.

Man, I might die of consumption! How romantic in a La Boheme kind of way. Hey Jack, you Van fan: wanna sing T.B. Sheets at my funeral?