I need to write about this because it’s been on my mind a lot lately. It’s about my wisdom teeth and their continued presence in my head.

I first found out that my two bottom wisdom teeth were growing in sideways and would have to be removed when I was seventeen, and for the seven years since then I’ve been (1) putting off having it done and (2) worrying about it.

I actually made and kept a preliminary appointment with an oral surgeon last year, but that was around the same time that Larry I was causing trouble, so I dealt with him first. But that surgeon’s office was done all in matchy browns and oranges with fancy chairs, like someone’s living room. Even the exam rooms were painted a soothing, sumptuous brown. The staff all wore identical burnt-orange scrubs. Would YOU want to undergo minor surgery in someone’s living room? I thought not. Garish hospital white, practical furniture, and bears-and-hippos scrubs for me, please.

Plus the surgeon was too jokey, and his hands were cold and stumpy. Needless to say, I didn’t call those interior decorators medical professionals back, even after I’d recovered from my surgery.

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Well then. It seems I’ve missed the first day of NaBloPoMo. That’s unfortunate, but perhaps less unfortunate than the reason I wasn’t around, namely, that I have never been sicker in my life than I have been these last couple days.

I’ll spare you most of the details, but last night, after a day and a half of horrible dizziness and nausea, I ended up in the ER. I think I’m having a bad reaction to the hydrocodone the doctor prescribed me for pain. Even though I stopped taking the pills yesterday morning, I still felt like absolute shit today when I woke up, so I went to see my primary care doctor. They kept me there for 5 hours poking and prodding me, scanning my guts, and giving me more IV fluids. I got a shot in my butt*, yippee.

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Below the fold is the video I made of pre-excision Larry II, as promised. [And here it is in its original YT context.]

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Tonight I’m blogging from bed. This is apparently what it takes to get an update out of me these days, so you’ll have to deal. Besides, you can’t stop me; I’ve already locked the door. Though I guess if you had the time machine required to stop me publishing this *after* you read it, you could just get here *before* I locked the door. But clearly you didn’t, so nyah.

Sam is fascinated by the moving text. I didn’t think dogs “got” things on screens, but every time the little worm of words starts crawling across the page he perks up his eyebrows and stares at it. Hee hee, and he follows the cursor when I wiggle it around the screen. Hoo boy, I don’t know which of us is more easily amused.

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The surgery went very well. I survived, as you can tell.*

I’ll probably put together a video about it when I get back to my apartment (where I left my firewire cable) tomorrow night. I’ll keep you posted.

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For most of yesterday I felt pretty stressed out (as you can probably tell from the entry below), but around 11:00 last night I suddenly felt calm and rational. I didn’t sleep much last night, but it wasn’t because I was worrying (consciously, at least). It’s strange.

It’ll probably be a different story once they get me into the bed and start drawing on me with the markers, but right now I’m no more perturbed by the idea of going under the knife this afternoon than if I were going to the orthodontist, or going to get a pedicure.

Possibly less so—that thing the pedicure people do where they slice off all your skin is weird.

Tomorrow, 2:00.

I know I haven’t been posting much lately. My time has been occupied mainly by (1) tutoring, (2) YouTube and other interweb concerns, and (3) not thinking about cancer.

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Once again it’s time to be deeply introspective, an about-face from this blog’s usual navel-gazing flavor.

I’m a bit intimidated by 2005, both the year itself and last year’s YiR. At the beginning of 2005, I declared it a “Year of Transition and Transformation,” and indeed it was.

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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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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.