Who needs that silly blood pressure thing anyways?

During my last physical I mentioned I was due for a colonoscopy. I was blessed with a talented colon; it possesses the innate ability to grow potentially precancerous polyps at an age where I shouldn’t even be remotely thinking about them. (I’m not THAT old!) So lucky me has to have this procedure every 5 years or so to have them removed.

So my spiffy new doctor sends me to a spiffy new gastroenterologist. It came up in conversation that I only take half the “prep”. Prep being all the shit they make you take the day before the procedure to ensure your colon is sparkly clean enough to eat off of. Wha?? He tells me they have newer gentler stuff and that I should take the whole thing.

Fast forward to day before procedure. The two packets of stuff I had to take during the say made me agree with him wholeheartedly, hey this wasn’t so bad at all. It even tasted better than that other shit that I’m sure was some sort of mixture of trucker cab mattress squeezings and nuclear waste along with the obligatory hint of lemon. So far so good except that my first foray into the bathroom yielded a horrible discovery…MY TOILET IS SUDDENLY AND INEXPLICABLY BROKEN. Are you kidding me?! Now of ALL times!? I jimmy it, to make it kinda work cuz at this point I am NOT having anyone over.

Before bed I had to take two tablets of something, although at this point I KNOW I got nothing left in me but I trusted this new doc about taking it all. About 5am I’m forced to bound from my bed for more purging fun….aka some INCREDIBLY INTENSE purging fun. Problem is there is nothing left in me and I wonder at what point when there’s nothing left does your body start purging vital organs? And then my body starts to feel REALLY inexplicably fucked up. My temp suddenly spikes and I instantly start pouring sweat. I don't know what to do cuz I can in no way get up to get the phone and call like maybe 911. Besides my place is kinda messy and do I want paramedics over? Imminent death vs guys seeing my messy apartment…hmmmm. Finally I am able to venture out. I get up but my legs feel like pliable rubber. I stumble and then promptly faint.

Each time I woke up I tried to get to the phone, but my body would do the “no we are laying down again RIGHT NOW” thing. My legs stayed in rubber mode, my head swam, I was cared shitless…pardon the pun. It took me about two and a half hours and a visually entertaining combination of staggering, fainting, crawling, stubborn determination (because I refuse to die from laxatives, I just REFUSE! I survived a wolf, I can survive shitting) and fervently praying but I finally made it to the phone! Ha ha victory! Fuck you, you can’t keep a good girl down! I call the clinic where I will be having the procedure. Relief flows over me when someone answers and I know that surely they will send a team over right away to tend to my dying personage. I tell her what’s happening to me and she says to me in a sing song happy cheery voice that it's just a reaction to the prep, don’t worry. Wtf? I repeat – I keep fainting! "Oh yeah it’s just your blood pressure dropping that can happen don't worry, just drink lots of water." Dumbfounded doesn’t even begin to describe what I was feeling at that point.

In the end I survived the purging, dangerously low blood pressure, slight concussion, dehydration and the vast disappointment of only getting some lame ass sedative that was no fun at all instead of the highly anticipated shot of Demerol. Fuckers…

I am in a quiet room

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.

I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.

I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die

by Mary Frye


Still miss ya mom, even though I know you're around and even with that thwap on the head....it might take a few more for me to get it as dense as I am...lol

What happens when you mix two Canadians, the US of A and a Newfie GPS?

So my partner in crime from my Europe adventure came out to visit me a couple weeks ago. Rather than hanging out here like we always do we decided to rent a car and head on down to Seattle for a little USA fun.

Now being rather impressed with the GPS that my cousin had brought with him on the Provence leg of our previous trip, (other than that one time it had us driving through some farmer's crop) I asked Trish to bring the GPS that her husband had bought her for Christmas. (-shrugs helplessly here- I know…). So anyways I pick her up at the airport and then we were off!

After making it to the border we spent the time waiting in line by setting the GPS up. There were a few different voices to choose from and we choose the male, Richard. Now why we didn’t pick a female is beyond me. My head was going towards a sexy male voice when I should have remembered the golden rule of trips…men and directions are like oil and water.

Add to that the time on the GPS was a half hour ahead of what it should be. A half an hour!!? It doesn’t take a genius to realize that we are dealing with some sort of Newfie made device. You can’t fool us! And in typical Newfie style we were sure Richard drank heavily. If he didn’t at that point he was sure gonna start after dealing with us. Ohhh yeah you do NOT want to go against what Richard says. As you take a right instead of the instructed left you could almost hear the annoyance in his voice as he repeated turn left, turn left, over and over again….and then begin to sputter directions in a vain attempt to get us back to where HE thought we should be going. (but hey we HAD to get off the road and eat at some point!) In the end I think he pretty much gave up. You could almost here him sigh in defeat as we blatantly defied his directions! In the end he got his little revenge by having us drive about in a shopping mall parking lot for a while before getting us back onto the highway.

But the revenge wasn’t over yet! Oh not by a long shot. After lunch we decided to kiss and make up with Richard and smartly put the address of our hotel in the GPS, deciding to just TRY and trust him from this point on. I was leery at the way he was taking us to the hotel after getting off the I5 but I pushed aside my doubts and followed Richards’s confidently spoken directions. That is until we ended up at a Shell gas station wherein he triumphantly announced that we had reached our destination!

Uuummm….not so much. We looked about thinking the hotel HAD to at LEAST be close by. Nope, couldn’t see it. I decide to drive around a bit and see if another “approach” would get us to our hotel. The second attempt ended just like the first, with Richard announcing once again that we had arrived at our destination, the Shell gas station!

With Richard now gagged and bound in the backseat of the car, we followed the street numbers aided by the map and found the hotel OURSELVES.

Ha! Take that Richard!

(I never did ask what Trish did with the GPS when she got back home. I'm wondering if "talking out your asshole" has taken on a whole new meaning in her household)

Adventures in Dating Part Seven/Happy Canada Day

Thought I would combine something Canadian-ish with something reflecting my adventures in dating. (Only some of you will get how this really applies...lol)