SERVICE ADVISORY. Apologies for the light posting. I'm down to D.C. for the annual medical Disneyland tour. My time has been eaten by a battery of tests and doctor visits, some tourism and socializing, and bouts of insomnia, mortality contemplation, and vacant staring at cable television. The highlight so far: today's cystoscopy, which went something like this:



I kid. The facility and care are everything one can expect from the National Institutes, and I do not seem to have any stones. But the procedure was performed with only local anesthetic (administered with what seemed to be a glue gun); this made insertion less traumatic than I expected (it was sort of like peeing in reverse), but did not alleviate the highly unpleasant sensation of wires being pushed up into my bladder, much less the somewhat worse sensation of a noble though doomed attempt to penetrate my ureters. Well, you hang around NIH long enough, sooner or later they let you on all the big-kid rides. Now if I could just stop pissing blood.

Tell you more later. Time to do some drinking.

UPDATE. Thanks, all, for the good wishes. The red tide has receded.

UPDATE 2. You're all so good to me, sob. Someone suggested pain medication. They did give me an anti-spasmodic, but shortly after taking the first dose I got a terrible abdominal cramp that sent me running back to the doctor, who assured me that this, too, would pass, and it did. Sometimes the only way to learn the side effects of a procedure is to experience them. (I'm still not sure whether my racing pulse and sleepless night were caused by my F-DOPA injections, and neither was my endocrinologist.) Consider it part of my contribution to medical science.