Yesterday I cleared out the comment moderation queue here, as I do about once a day. Just now I logged in and found 620 comments waiting for me. Every last one was spam, and more than 90% were nearly identical.

I’ve tried to patch it up—we’ll see if this works. NB: If you’re ever tempted to share an anecdote about your trip to Vegas and all the fun casino games you played there, don’t be surprised if your comment, uh, falls down the stairs or walks into a door or something.

I visited the ENT doctor this afternoon to discuss the details of my pathology report. I figured I’d *finally* learn Larry’s secret identity, and we’d work out treatment (or not) from there.

Ha.

The tests all showed…nothing. On the one hand, this is good because the somethings they would have found were various sorts of abnormalities. On the other hand, it’d be great to have a diagnosis. Quote of the day, from the doc as he poked at Larry: “It’s definitely something.”

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In a YouTube comment today, from a person who is definitely not stupid and otherwise has a decent grasp of grammar:

the video clip was kind’ve weird

That’s kind’ve, used in place of kind of. Looks like he ran the shoulda/woulda/coulda transformation backward on kinda, probably subconsciously. I’ve never seen anyone do that before. Fascinating, innit?

After several hours of phone tag with the doctor’s office, I finally heard from the nurse that my pathology report showed no cancer cells! Huzzah!

She didn’t say what the rest of the report said—apparently I need to see the doctor in person to discuss it, so I made an appointment for Thursday afternoon.

I also saw my GP today, before I heard back from the nurse. He said he didn’t think it was anything scary, maybe a “weird” lipoma (to explain the fluid), but that the only way to know for sure was to see the biopsy results.

So we still don’t know what it is (well, I don’t—at least one doctor does), but we’ve ruled out the big baddie, and that is, to put it mildly, freaking awesome.

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P.S. I’ve taken down the previous post; I was right the first time, when I decided not to put it up.

If you’re making a video to post on YouTube, you should set up the lights EVERY DAMN TIME, no matter how late it is or how crappy you feel.

You never know when you’ll be on national television.

First, the (tentative) good news. This morning I went in for the fine-needle aspiration, which turned out to include not only an ultrasound, but, based on what they saw on the ultrasound, a CT scan—bonus!

The needle bit wasn’t bad. There were four people in and out of the room, and they kept stepping out into the hallway to talk, which was a little stressful, but it’s probably better that I didn’t hear all the details anyway. The part with actual stabbiness was nearly pain-free. Uncomfortable, yes—three tiny numbing needles and some poking around in my neck—but preferable to, say, a series of paper cuts, or dropping a dictionary on your toes.

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Since it’s Larry’s first Christmas, I was going to get his picture with Santa. Turns out the line was really long, so we went to these other folks instead.

After the MRI part ends (3:00) it gets pretty boring. Feel free to skip ahead to the puppy at the end.

It’s 10:30 in the morning on the sixteenth of December, and the temperature outside is a steamy 73 degrees. We’re supposed to hit 80 tomorrow. I think it’s safe to say that Christmas 2006 won’t be a white one.

It’s one or the other, for sure.

Hearing from the doctor that the MRI was inconclusive got me worried. I assumed that if he’d thought it was a lipoma, he would’ve ordered a test that would differentiate between lipoma and not-lipoma. My assumption turned out to be correct.

I got to see the radiologist’s report today, and it did conclude two things: (1) there is a large* mass under my left shoulderblade, sitting on top of my lung, and (2) it is definitely not a lipoma.

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Hi Natalie, this is Dr. X. I got your MRI results, and there’s definitely a mass of some sort in your neck. [No, really?] We’re going to get you an appointment with an ear, nose, and throat doctor to have it biopsied, okay?

Commence freaking out in three . . . two . . .