My Big Adventure at the Hospital 

   Well, after flunking my last two tests to see if I might have Celiac’s disease (It’s not my fault I studied hard for both of them... ) I had talked to my doctor and since I seemed to be responding pretty well to a gluten free diet he suggested we do one more test.  He recommended we do an Upper Endoscopy.  Which is medical jargon for cramming a small camera down my throat to look at my stomach and small intestine.        

*** For those of you that might not know: Celiac’s disease is an intolerance to “Gluten” (pretty much an allergy), which is a protein found in wheat, rye, barley, and oats.  Gluten unfortunately seems like it is hidden in just about every processed food known to man either as a thickener, filler, or additive.  Just to give you a little more background a recent article I read stated that it is now suspected that 1 in 133 Americans have the disease, but due to it its varied symptoms it most often goes misdiagnosed or undiagnosed.  They say that roughly 97% of people in the U.S. still haven’t been officially diagnosed.  Another article I read said that on average in the U.S. it takes about 10 years for a person to be officially diagnosed with the disease in contrast to Italy where the disease is much more closely tracked and an official diagnosis happens within a couple of weeks of the first onset of symptoms.  Although many of the symptoms may vary from person to person some of the more common symptoms that I have are chronic fatigue, thyroid problems, digestive problems, joint pain, problems concentrating, neurological problems, etc.***

          So anyway I went in for my procedure on the 13^th of this month.  First off two different nurses had to stick me 6 times before they could get a working IV in me.  Then they wheeled me into the procedure room on the gurney.  The nurses asked me a couple of questions like if I have a living will (that was encouraging to hear), and hooked me up to the diagnostic machinery to make sure I was maintaining adequate oil pressure and also to track my engine to make sure it didn’t misfire during the procedure.  The next thing I know the nurse puts the oxygen tubes in my nose and apparently that’s when they started the anesthesia too, because I asked her if I was supposed to feel dizzy already, and she said yes.  I don’t remember ever closing my eyes or opening them back up, but the next thing I remembered was them wheeling me out of the procedure room.  I was still really out of it, but I do kind of remember asking them something like if they had started yet.  Then when they wheeled me back into the the post-op room, apparently because I was alone and bored somehow I got the marvelous idea to call Emilie up.  I now know this because Emilie apparently has a 3 minute voice mail message of me rattling on about just about nothing and occasionally slurring my speech.  Even now I still have no recollection of what I might have said, but I do now understand why they specifically state on the release form that I should not operate heavy machinery or sign any legal contracts for 24 hrs. 

          Then they brought my parents in.  My parents had made the trip up to drive me to the hospital and back to my apartment.  I vaguely remember them giving me a muffin and a can of Pepsi.  At that point since I had been fasting and not drinking anything for over 14 hours I quickly snarfed down the muffin with a plastic fork.  There is a good chance I may have ingested the fork in the process, but I may never know .  Then I downed the whole can of Pepsi and when I was finished I was amazed to realize that it was diet and I hate diet pop, but I was so out of it I couldn’t even tell the difference. 

New Years and Beyond

        Well, just to update all of you on some of the things that I have been doing in the last couple of weeks.  Two weeks ago I drove up to Gurnee, IL to see my lovely girlfriend Emilie and meet the rest of her family.  Haley had also driven up there and all of us went to their neighborhood’s New Years Eve Party.  Amazingly enough I didn’t get lost on the way up or back.  Some of the other highlights of the trip were attending my first service at a traditional Armenian Church, eating raw meat as a delicacy, eating the best pancakes I’ve ever tasted, and among his many other antics watching a particularly goofy Umbrella Cockatoo named “Merlin” entertain us by swinging upside down in his cage. 

         Last weekend I went to Hillsborough with Emilie, Emily Johns, and Kara to see two of our friends get married.  The wedding and reception were both really awesome.  Though in my opinion what made it such a particularly beautiful wedding was to know that two of my strong Christian friends were being forever united by the God they love more than anything in the world.  May God Bless them in their new life together and keep them from getting sun burned on their Honeymoon in the Bahamas.        

         This week I spent 4 days cleaning and completely reorganizing the kitchen in our guy’s apartment (a.k.a. Jesus’ Townhouse).  And yes frighteningly enough it did really need that much cleaning.  In the process I threw out two 30 gal. bags of garbage and recycled four 30 gal. bags of recyclables.  Among the number of things I had to scrub out of the Linoleum floor was the rest of the dried chocolate cake and icing from Lonnie and Jon’s cake fight (during Lonnie’s birthday party), some very nasty unidentified food substances, and the drool from the last time Josh slept on the kitchen floor.  The floor is now so clean you might as well eat Chocolate Cake off of it.  I'll even go as far as to say that the next time my roomate Josh decides to do late night homework in the kitchen and falls asleep on the floor he may even get a much more comfortable nights sleep out of it.  

• A brand new Gallop Poll says 69% of Americans prefer the Greeting Merry Christmas over Happy Holidays.
  
• Only 3% of the American population objects to the words "Merry Christmas".
  
• The House of Representative recently passed a resolution respecting the traditions of Christmas 401 members to 22.
• The village of Wellington, Florida recently denied a private resident permission to put up a manger scene.  Within the last few days after some publicity the village council finally voted to allow the resident to display his scene. 
  
• In Plano Texas 4 families of 2,3,4 and 5^th graders have filed a law suit in federal court course saying that their children have been denied their right to free expression.  The case centers around children giving each other religious messages around Christmas time.  Apparently Plano  students could not pass a pencil that says “Jesus Loves Me” from one student to the next.  School authorities also allegedly demanded that a holiday party only include white items, no Christmas colors.
  
• At a Holiday-fest at a local park in Chula Vista California a young Christian Children’s Dance troop was barred from performing in the local parks talent show.  The young Christian dance troop were told by park officials to turn their T-Shirts inside out which displayed a cross and read “Jesus Christ Dancers” or they could not perform.  The young dancers refused and left the stage in tears.  Aside from their final decision, the officials had been priorly notified of the Dance troops name and that they would be dancing to Christian hip-hop.  Also during the festival another group led a Hawaiian prayer to the gods, and at the end of the show they lit a Menorah.  However, none of these other non-Christian performances seemed to have raised any questions.                                                                                                                            
  
• You can watch these news stories on www.foxnews.com at "The O'Reilly factor" and "Hannity & Colmes".