C.Y.A.

I have some cousins that don't go to the doctor. I haven't really had in depth conversations with them to figure out their reasons, but I've always been fascinated with their lifestyle. This post isn't about the stupidity of being anti-doctor. This post is going to be about why I kind of agree with them.

I'm in a unique position. We've all visited doctors at one time or another, but not very many people can say the following words, "If it weren't for medical intervention, I'd be dead." Well, my wife can say that... and I was with her when she almost died so you won't catch me trashing on doctors too badly. But let me just tell you how stupid most doctors are. In my 31 years of life, I've observed what seems to be doctors getting paid to guess. Apparently, that's what they teach you in medical school. Just guess. "If you're wrong, you'll find out soon enough and then you can change your mind. If you're wrong too many times, though, someone could die... so try to minimize your bad guesses the best you can."

Monday: Tyton has swollen tonsils with white patches all over them. Tyton goes to doctor. Strep Test culture is taken and comes back negative. He is given an antibiotic and told to return on Wednesday.

Wednesday: Tyton returns to doctor, but his primary doctor doesn't work Wednesdays. Doctor says, "Hmmm. That antibiotic isn't working. Let's give him a really painful shot in the leg. That should do it. Come back tomorrow morning so we can see if the nasty antibiotic combined with the painful shot did the trick."

Thursday Morning: Doctor says, "I'm not seeing any decrease in that swelling. I'm going to refer Tyton to an Ear, Nose, Throat specialist guy where your co-pay should double. How does that sound?"

Thursday Afternoon: Nurse comes in and says, "Whoa. That tonsil will probably need to be drained. That's a very painful procedure. He'll need to be put to sleep unless you plan on holding him down." Tytons eyes are the size of large dinner plates and it's obvious he's too shocked to speak. Enter Specialist. He spends less than 5 minutes with Tyton and says, "We don't need to drain that tonsil. Instead, head over to the hospital and have a large needle shoved into his tiny arm. We can test for mono. I definitely think it's mono." I say, "But he has tons of energy. Isn't fatigue the primary symptom of mono?" Specialist says, "Good point... hmmm. Well we can test for other things, too. I'm also going to switch his antibiotic to one that might work better, but it tastes an awful lot like feces." Tyton then asks what feces is.

Later Thursday Afternoon: Blood drawn and tested.

Friday Morning: I call the Specialist to find out what the problem is. Specialist assistant says, "Well, the mono test was negative. All of his blood cell counts were normal so that means it isn't blah, blah, blah or blah blah blah." I say, "So we really don't know anything, right?" Assistant sighs and says, "Right. But it could be Strep." I tell him that the strep test was negative at our regular doctor. Assistant says, "Those throat cultures are wrong 50% of the time." Surprisingly, assistant doesn't ask us to come in for a different, more accurate strep test.

Monday: Tyton has a rash from head to toe that itches like crazy. We call the specialist and he says it's probably an allergic reaction to the antibiotic so he switches it again so something that tastes like strawberry citrus bile.

Wednesday: The rash is worse and so we take him back to his regular doctor. I spend about 30 minutes filling her in on everything we don't know so that way we all don't know the same stuff. She says she thinks it might be mono. I say, "Huh?" She then says that the specialist did the wrong mono test that usually doesn't work on six year old kids. She then says that it's unlikely he's allergic to two separate antibiotics from two different families and to continue with the doses from the newest one. I ask if she can re-test his blood sample for the correct mono test. She say, "Oh no. That blood is gone. But mono is a virus anyway so redrawing and retesting blood doesn't really matter anyway." Then the doctor says, "One thing we know for sure is that he had a severe case of tonsillitis." Really? Did you come to that conclusion based on the softball sized tonsil? I bring up the whole "fatigue" thing again and she says, "Kids are able to retain energy through a lot of illnesses that are supposed to make them tired."

Now it's Friday and his rash is gone. His antibiotic dosage is completed. His tonsil isn't swollen anymore and he has the exact same amount of energy as he's had for the last two weeks. And we still have no idea what was wrong with him.

Bad News

Betsy and I have suspected for quite some time now that there was something wrong with our boys. There have been a lot of sleepless nights over the last several years as Betsy and I have tried to figure out how to deal with our suspicions.

Our fears were confirmed today by a doctor via email. We sent him a photo of our boys and he replied with the words we've always been terrified of hearing... "Your kids are retarded."

Here's the photo we sent him:

Pepper Spray

Back in the day when I worked graveyard shift things got very boring at around two or three in the morning. We decided, the geniuses that we are, that we were going to spray each other in the face with our pepper spray... you know... for fun.

My reaction to being sprayed wasn't very funny, neither was Carvers, but this guy (his name is Alan Green) was totally hilarious. I still can't believe how funny this is. He quit shortly after this video was taken because he wanted to snowboard more often than he had been and his graveyard shift kept interfering with his snowboarding schedule. I'm not sure where Green is now, but if he stumbles across this video... he needs to email me. That guy is hilarious.

Ninja Fart (Wah)

I spent a couple of years in England on a proselyting mission for my church. As if that kind of lifestyle isn't interesting enough, often missionaries find other things to do to entertain themselves. Most of them aren't mature forms of entertainment. If you think about it, at the end of the day you still have a bunch of 19 or 20 year old guys who have chosen to devote two years of their life to teaching people about their church. It can be expected that their immaturity will find a way to escape.

I don't remember who started it, but somebody in one of my areas had a problem with air escaping from his anus. It was a chronic problem that we'd all make fun of him for. Eventually, he started doing his best to make his flatulence "quiet"... if he could. He started calling his silent farts "stealthy". Somehow the "stealth farts" morphed into "ninja farts" since ninja's are stealthy by nature. Well this missionary was so proud of his "ninja farts" that he wanted to make sure his fellow missionaries knew when he was being stealthy, so he started making a very quiet ninja sound effect whenever he'd let a "ninja fart". The sound effect was "wah" spoken as high-pitched as a male voice could muster and at a volume level just above a whisper. Ideally, only those individuals within three feet of him would ever even know he'd fluffed. The story climaxed when we were at a dinner appointment at a members house. During the blessing on the food, three of us heard the fourth missionary say "wah" in the middle of the prayer. Luckily the member was an old lady and she had no idea we were all stifling laughs through the prayer.

You're probably wondering where I'm going with this. When I returned from my mission, I told my family about the "ninja farts" and the stealthy nature of proclaiming the sneakiness of one's farting action.

I remember that my family decided to go to Seattle to visit my brother, Ryan, and his wife. When we all got there, my family wanted me to share the "ninja fart" story with Ryan. He and his wife were both thoroughly entertained. At some point during our visit, a couple of my brothers started saying "wah" whenever they'd fart. We all thought it was pretty funny. Before long, everyone in my family including my sister, my sister-in-law, and my mother and father were all saying "wah" whenever we'd fart.

Now... here's the point of my story: People (including you) fart a lot more often than you think. There were eight of us who were hanging out together all day, every day for about five days. Not five minutes went by during the entire five days that someone wasn't saying "wah". Seriously. Not five minutes.

So if you're ever in a room with eight people, you can be pretty dang sure that every five minutes at least one person has let some silent air slip out of their arse. Think about that!

Big Girl

Season is almost 7 months old. It's so crazy. She's gotten so big. Lately she's been able to grip things in her hands and swing them around without letting go. I took a couple of photos of her holding her new favorite toy. Don't worry, though. It's a butter knife so it's completely safe. We'd never put our kids in danger by giving them a steak knife or anything.

Enjoy the photo's.

Mathematics

Math has never been one of my strong suits. I haven't taken a math class in about 15 years. My last math class was when I was a sophomore in High School and I took Geometry. I don't remember much about that class because there was a dude in there who was always trying to pick a fight with me. I spent most of my time worrying about whether he was going to punch me in the face after class than I did focusing on the teacher.

So anyway, I just spent about an hour arguing with one of my coworkers about a story problem that has confused me for the last two decades. You've probably heard it, but the story problem goes like this:

Three guys go to a hotel and get a room for $15, paying $5 each. After they get to their room, the manager thinks, "I think I may have overcharged those three guys." So he gives the bellhop $5 and tells him to take it up to the guys as a refund. Halfway to the room, the bellhop thinks, "Since $5 can't be split three ways, I'll just take $2." So he puts two dollars in his pocket and gives each of the three guys a $1 refund.

So now each of the three guys has only paid $4... totaling 12$. The bellhop has $2 in his pocket which makes $14. Where's the other dollar?

I've told this story to dozens of people over the years. Usually we laugh and then talk about how stupid math is and how if "math" was a mortal entity, we would have stabbed it repeatedly, placed it in a gunny sack and thrown it into a large body of water after securing it to a heavy object of some sort.

But every once in a while (like today) I'll tell the story and someone will think they can explain to me where that missing dollar went. My coworker just spent at least 60 minutes trying to tell me about how it's a "play on words" and how Asians engage in this type of reckless tomfoolery --

*break* Ok. I'm not lying. My coworker just came back in here while I was typing this blog and spent another 15 minutes trying to explain this to me. I kept telling him to get out of my office and he said, "I will as soon as you acknowledge there's no such thing as a mathematical impossibility." So I agreed with him, but then he sat down and started talking about "actual reality" and "perceived reality". Then he started in on the difference between what the patrons actually paid versus what they thought they paid. Criminy! I had this exact conversation with my dad 10 years ago!

This is what I'm talking about. The story is fun to tell. The way the story is told is what I love about it. Of course something goes wrong with the way it's told. No argument there. My coworker actually drew some notes on the back of my appointment cards and some post-its in an attempt to illustrate. I wish I had a scanner here at work so I could attach these sweet visual aids. It would increase the entertainment value of this tale.

The best part is that I have a job where coworkers can have long meaningless conversations about virtually nothing. In fact, at one point my supervisor chimed in and said, "If the guys gave the $3 back to the bellhop then all the money is accounted for." That was his solution.

Walmart

We've all had our peculiar Walmart experiences and I'm not about to pretend like my Walmart experience is superior to yours, but I thought I'd share it.

I like Walmart. I shop there all the time. Mostly I like it because I don't feel like I'm being judged. I mean... how can people judge me when it's obvious I'm so much better than them?

So I'm there with my friend and we're on the Kool-aid isle (I'm not sure why) and this guy walks past us and I smell a distinct odor of Pine. Not like Pine-sol, but actual Pine Trees. Then my friend says, "Hey Cameron. Check out the Mountain Man. Dude looks like Paul Bunyan." The guy had one of the thickest beards I'd ever seen and he was wearing an equally thick, red, turtleneck sweatshirt. He had on some plaid shorts and some hiking boots. My friend was right... he DID look rather odd. The problem was, Mountain Man was way too close to us for my friend to be mocking him as loudly as he was.

Sure enough, immediately following my friends "Paul Bunyan" comment Mountain Man looks over at us and makes eye contact with me as I'm trying to identify who my friend is referring to. Then Mountain Man, without breaking eye contact, starts walking swiftly toward me with a fairly aggressive look on his face. I mumble something like, "Nice one, dude. Here he comes. He totally heard you."

Mountain Man gets about 12 inches away from my face and I'm fully expecting some sort of physical attack. I mean, really.... there are a lot of crazy people who shop at Walmart. Anything is possible. Then this dude unleashes the most bizarre, ranting, soapbox-type speech I've ever heard. It went something like this (keep in mind, the rant was directed toward me while my friend was standing three feet away trying not to laugh): "I heard what you said" (I tried to motion toward my friend, but MM wasn't having it) "Just because I'm wearing this sweater doesn't give you the right to speak ill. I own a business and I'll tell you right now if you worked for me I'd fire your ass on the spot for making that sort of derogatory comment. I used to teach at a local college and I taught my students to never speak in such a way." I stood there for about 10 seconds slowly realizing that this guy was crazy. He was making less sense with each sentence. Finally, MM wandered away and my friend thought it was hilarious.

So we get our stuff and make our way to the checkout lines. I keep noticing MM as he wanders around the store and I also notice he keeps staring at me in a sex offender kind of way. It was pretty creepy. His red sweater just kept jumping out at me every time he was in my field of vision. I couldn't keep my eyes off him. Then my friend says, "I'm gonna go over to that line. It looks like it's moving faster." So he goes over to the other line, but after about five minutes it's obvious the checker on his line is going really, really, really slow, so he bounces back to my line. Then he says (again, way too loudly) "I'm coming back over here, that checker is freakin' retarded!" The 20-something year old girl in front of us in line turns around and says, "That checker is my sister and she's not retarded. She's actually one of the best checkers this store has." I'm thinking, "Seriously, get me out of this store." My friend replies, "I wasn't talking about THAT checker. It was the one over there. She's going really slow."

So the line keeps moving and we finally get up to the cashier. All of a sudden, I remembered that a few days earlier I had seen a girl I went to elementary school with named Marilee working at this exact store. Marilee was probably the one girl in my class who was dorkier than I was. I thought, "Maybe I could have this checker pass on a 'hello' to her. I'm sure she'd be flattered." So I say to the checker, "Does Marilee work here?" even though I knew she did. The checker says, "That name doesn't sound familiar. What does she look like?" Criminy. I stood there stuttering, trying to figure out a description that wasn't insulting. Then the checker says, "I think I know who you're talking about. Does she work graveyards with her mom? They're both fat?" I sighed and said, "Yeah. That's her. Can you tell her I said 'hi'?"

While I'm walking out of the store with my friend who can't stop laughing, I start telling him about how I can't believe how uncomfortable and bizarre this trip to Walmart had turned out. As I'm explaining to him that I don't think things could get any more weird, a four-year-old kid with a mullet sprints past me and bolts out the sliding doors toward the parking lot.

I hear a lady behind me scream "Timmy. Don't run into the road like that! Do you want to get hit again?"