ONWARD AND FORWARD IN NEW MEXICO

It has been awhile since we got a message out. Kind of had to have an attitude re-adjustment. Think that has been accomplished. Although, I am not absolutely sure - I have a new anger subject. I have been trying to get on the computer for two days and it just sits here and makes a noise and sticks it tongue out at me. I finally called Scott and he agreed to come up and fix it tomorrow. I leave and come back and Mary Marlin is sitting here just computing away like nothing ever happened. Oh - that upsets me! Its almost like discrimination. Now she thinks she knows more than I do. Time for another attitude readjustment.


NEW MEXICO MEDICAL TESTS:

Instead of being able to go to one facility and have a team of doctors work me over one after another, I have had to schedule appointments with various doctors all over town in Albuquerque. Each doctor is an automatic one hour wait in the waiting room in addition to your appointment time. Each doctor visit is another treat of three year old magazines that are worn and torn with all the cross word puzzles and Viagra ads torn out. I wonder how many contagious diseases you pick up in the doctor's office just by handling those magazines.

The first test was an Echo Cardiogram to check out my heart. I guess this is something new. They put all these wires on and their is this strange gurgling sound and these wierd pulsating images come up on the computer screen. I think that is your heart. When the procedure is all over you hear - "HEART IS OKAY" - "HEART IS OKAY" - "HEART IS OKAY" - "HEART IS OKAY" - "HEART IS OKAY" - just like an echo. No wonder they call it an echo cardiogram. I understand the faintest of these sounds can be heard all the way down to Houston. I guess that is the reason they wanted me to get it done here. The folks down in Houston would get the results right away - even beats electronic transmission.

I was in severe pain during this procedure. Not from the procedure but from stomach gas. After hearing the echo on my heart results I was determined to hold that gas on my stomach until I got out of there, otherwise it would have been a "Red Alert" and we would have had Homeland Security rushing into the hospital while F-16's were flying overhead. What a nightmare that was.

Yesterday i went over and had a CAT Scan at New Mexico Ongology. That wasn't too bad except they ask you to hold your breath for twenty seconds and then ask you a question. that's the way Dentists operate - fill your mouth full of tools and then expect you to carry on a conversation.

In preparation for the CAT Scan, I had to go in the day before and pick up two really huge bottles of barium which I was supposed to drink. Actually, I think they are about a pint, but when you're drinking that stuff each bottle suddenly becomes about 5 gallons in size.

This is a great improvement from the old days. They used to get that barium into your stomach a different way - like with an enema. Oh - I hated that more than anything. They would fill you full of that white stuff and you thought if you blinked an eye you were going to lose it all. You lay there careful not to breathe or blink an eye - or even have a new thought come into your mind, and then they finally finish up. They send you to a rest room one hundred yards away through this maze of hallways - to discharge the barium they have forced into your system. I kept looking over my shoulder expecting to see a white line like the center stripe down the highway. I remember one time I got lost on the way to the rest room and entered a door where I didn't recognize any of the plumbing fixtures. I didn't have time to analyze the situation, I had to get rid of that stuff. I'm just an old farm boy so I figured I just wasn't up to date on new plumbing fixtures. I learned after the fact that I had entered the wrong room and that was a laundry sink. I never went back to the hospital - knowing how unsanitary it was.

Anyway, with this new and improved system, they give you these two bottles which you are supposed to drink before you come in. In case you cheated, they give you another huge glass of this stuff to drink just before they scan your cats. They even have this stuff in flavors now - vanilla, bananna or apple. When I went in to sign for my bottles the day before the CAT Scan, she asked me what flavor I preferred. I looked her straight in the eye with the most serious face I possess and I said; "Budweiser"! She got this kind of shocked look on her face as her mouth fell open a bit. This whole business isn't all that much fun - I gotta have fun somewhere along the line.

Well I got some of the frustration off my chest by writing a kind of blunt - maybe a little bit nasty - ten page letter to a whole bunch of people in the Presbyterian system, including the President and Chairman of the Board. I figure that between this letter an my behavior at the two exams I have completed, they are going to pay me to go back to MD Anderson. On the other hand, they might just kick me out of the program altogether - we will see.

Talked to the General Manager at CarMax today, and after I had convinced a doctor to sign a work release I was able to convince the GM that I could go back to work tomorrow, so I will be the all time friend of the consumer again tomorrow as I show and tell everything I want you to know about any and all of our special one owner grandmother cars that have never been in the rain or snow and only driven for a total of 500 miles over the past two years. Just kidding - if I wasn't with CarMax I am sure I couldn't sell cars. CarMax is the best of the best, and starting tomorrow they will be the most betterest in the business.

Have a great weekend!!