Vignettes

Vignettes from Gary's visit to the allergist.

• She looked at his back and said, "This looks like psoriasis."  Yes, it does, but Gary explained the dermatologist had run four biopsies, and each came back as Not Psoriasis.   (Saint Louisians of a particular age will remember Patty Stallings, who was wrongly imprisoned for infanticide because half of the medical labs in St. Louis can't read test results correctly.) The allergist is skeptical, because it really does look like psoriasis.  But if so, that means one step forward, one hundred fifty steps back. 
• She said, "Roll up your pant leg so I can see how it looks behind your knee." Gary answered by taking his pants off entirely, insisting, over her protests, that she needed to get the whole picture. 
• When she asked me about his hobbies, I answered that he does feed peanuts to the raccoons. I thought I was telegraphing Peanut Allergy, but she said, alarmed, "Does he TOUCH the raccoons?" (No, but only because they're shy.)

There is a plan now, anyway, even though Gary is already balking at it. She's going to make him stop his daily OTC vitamins, make him take two pills for his inflammation, then have me paint the back of his left knee with a special cream. 

I'm all excited that I get to practice the scientific method with the left knee as test subject and right knee as control.  Gary is considerably less excited about being a "guinea pig." Guinea Pigging is a wonderful hobby in my book, but he doesn't see it that way.

Comments

[KC]

Up close and personal with Science!

(but seriously, being able to actually *do* a "does this work" control/active experiment instead of just trying to sort of guess whether the improvement is because of the slow-acting thing you started taking two months ago: so much more satisfying!)(are you going to paint a similar-cream-but-without-active-ingredients on the other knee so even Gary doesn't know which is which?)

That said, maybe he has not had the "auuuugh I don't even know if this is working" experience enough to have developed the muscles necessary to appreciate the ability to self-guinea-pig? There are some things it definitely takes... some pre-existing weirdness... to truly appreciate. (like when an insurance claim just... goes through. Normal people: don't even notice; the Special Ones: "you mean I don't have to call back at least two entities, for a minimum of weeks, each of which keeps losing the notes and 'can't find' their faxes???!!!! I'm just *done*??? HOORAY!")

[theQueen]

KC - for a brief 12 minute period today he thought he might be allergic to the caffeine in Dr. Pepper. And the insurance claim for the meds she prescribed is not just going through. I don't even know who to call. I gave it two days to resolve itself. I]Express scripts is legendary in their inability to communicate.