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Ping Rememberances from Pittsburgh

I am on day two of a work trip. Earlier today, I was in Philadelpia. Nothing exciting happened there, and my time in Pittsburgh has been mostly uneventful as well save a 45 minute confusion over which damn river to cross and a diversion to a bar that was tiki. If I ever get around to finding the damn cord for my camera, I can show you pictures of a gigantic waste of ingenuity (sp) that is a sensor-operated waterfall/hand faucet in a women's restroom. Oh the anticipation!

Jane, my sister-in-law of Plain-Jane.com fame, has been lamenting her cyst, now known as Glenda or GLOD (insert TM here). She mentioned in her journal my former cyst, Ping, who has actually been on my mind quite a bit lately. Ping was a golf ball sized cyst lodged in my left maxillary sinus which made takeoff and landing an especially uncomfortable event. Utterly harmless save the pounding and unforgiving sinus headaches, Ping was successfully removed from my sinus on St. Patty's Day a couple of years ago. Had it not been for a few familiar headaches and the appearance of something that is most likely just an unfortunate zit, I wouldn't have thought much of Ping. However, when asked to confirm that I was just freaking out over a zit, my mother casually diagnosed the lump on the back of my head as a cyst.

I should explain - a cyst lodged in your left maxillary sinus is not at all visible to the human eye. My face was not grossly malformed due to a golf ball sized cyst named Ping. A small pea or marble sized lump produding from the back of the head/neck area could still easily be a zit or something else. My mother, though very intelligent, is not a trained healthcare professional. I, however, am an undiagnosed hypochondriac therefore I took her suggestion that it could be a cyst very seriously. In fact, in the three days since I began worrying about it, I think my pea to marble sized lump has shrank. I now believe that the only remmenant (sp) left of it is probably the callus I've worn in the back of my head/neck by constantly trying to locate it.

This in no way relates to Jane's Glenda which is a real and in no way imagined medical phenom. I hear talk of cysts, and I think of Ping because Ping is thinking of me, and I am best at thinking only of myself. So anyhow, send good vibes out to Jane and I hope that it is much less painful to have Glenda surgery than it is to have Ping/sinus surgery. Seriously, that shit is fucking wrong for at least one full day. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It took a full week for the swelling to go down enough that my not then fiance/husband finally commented, "I think you are getting better. I mean your nose is looking better. I didn't think it was that big."

Fucking Ping. Anyhow, Glenda or GLOD, be gone. Don't come around here no more. Hey!

Tom Petty seems to be a fitting soundtrack for cyst removal, don't you think?

9:17 p.m. - August 02, 2005

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