thank you notes 2/4

i'm thankful for my gastroenterologist, who was nice and smart and who didn't make me feel like he was rushing through my appointment to get to the next patient on his schedule. i'm thankful that though i was nervous, my blood pressure was much lower than it usually is when they take a reading at the office, even though i had just biked across town through strong cold wind. i'm thankful that my gastroenterologist appreciated the comprehensive yet readable spreadsheet i had prepared detailing my symptoms, medications i'd tried, medications i was currently taking, effects and side effects, and lifestyle modifications i'd made. i'm thankful that he said that i was doing everything right and was a model patient and that he was sorry nothing had worked so far. i'm thankful for how forthright he was, for how he said that i had tried basically every medication there is to try and that because none of it had really worked and there was nothing new he could recommend in that sphere, the next step would be to verify for sure that my issue is reflux and is not something else (maybe gallbladder issues or or the nebulous nebula of ibs) presenting as reflux. 

i'm thankful for the clarity with which he laid out the process for verifying the presence of reflux, which involves installing a probe inside my esophagus for several days to measure changes in my PH there. i'm thankful for the way he prefaced his description of one method for installing the probe by saying, while grinning, "and i swear, this is actually the least invasive way!" and then told me that the method involved putting the probe on the end of a wire, then threading the wire through my nose, down my throat, and into my esophagus, then taping the end of the wire hanging out of my nostril to the side of my face for several days so that the probe can be pulled out and retrieved after enough data has been collected. i'm thankful that he laughed when i told him that i could probably deal with that if i had to, because i was married now and not trying to pick up girls on the reg. i'm thankful, though, that there was a second method, which involved using an endoscopy to install a disposable probe (which will "pass" in a few days), a process which i've basically experienced before and which is fine with me because of the magic wonder of IV anesthesia. i'm thankful that i felt confident and self-assured enough to tell him that i preferred the second method, because i do not cherish unpleasant and uncomfortable experiences, and thankful that he did too, because it would afford him another opportunity to survey the mysteries of my interior. i'm thankful that hearing about things going up people's noses always makes me think of the ancient egyptians and how i read as a mummy-obsessed child that the brains of the dead were pulled out of their noses by way of a long curved hook. i'm thankful that for a brief period in a few weeks, d and i will both be cyborgs together.

i'm thankful for the humor with which my gastroenterologist described what the next step would be if the probe discovers that the issue is in fact reflux, which is an operation in which the top of my stomach is pulled up and twisted around the bottom of my esophagus to strengthen the connection between them. i'm thankful for how he casually joked that in the early days of the surgery, there were sometimes issues "because they really cranked it tight" and then food couldn't always get down into people's stomachs through the too small hole, but thankful for his assurance that "we've mostly worked out the kinks now." i'm thankful that i was able to schedule the endoscopy/probe installation for fairly soon and thankful that the woman who scheduled it for me was listening to "ice, ice baby" on a small personal stereo. i'm thankful that the tinny beat of the song clashed interestingly with feist's "1234" which was playing over the clinic's PA (i'm thankful that i originally thought upon hearing feist's faint voice that the song was my favorite of her songs, "inside and out," which seemed like it would be a punnily appropriate song to be played in a gastroenterologist's office). i'm thankful for the way the woman scheduling the endoscopy bounced up and down in her chair in time with vanilla ice's flow.

i'm thankful that the word "gastroenterologist" is so fun to say (i'm thankful for trochees, which one must distinguish from troches) and thankful that every time i write "my gastroenterologist," i think of the zany 90s comic novel my cousin, my gastroenterologist by mark leyner, which i read when i was in college and smoking weed while discovering postmodernism. i'm thankful for the alany, which has probably been pointed out by someone before, that mark leyner wrote a book called my cousin, my gastroenterologist and then went on from writing "emptily ironic "image-fiction"/"the fictional analogue of the best drug you ever took" to co-write "why do men have nipples?" and two other best-selling "humorous, though fact-based, books on medicine" which, most likely, reside not in people's bookshelves or on their desks but on tops of the toilet in their bathrooms. i'm thankful for arkady leokum's tell me why series, which were the books on top of my first childhood toilet and from which i learned a great deal about the systems of the world while also going to the bathroom.