Life Recipes

I'm am eating my fave snack of sugar-free Jello™ mixed with non-fat fage. (I know you're jealous.) I pray this combo does not cause cancer. For me, it may be too late though I'm okay with it because when one of those well-meaning folks says to me, "What did you eat that caused your cancer?" I can give them my secret recipe.

I went for my CT scan. I didn't have to experience the rectal contrast part of the exam that I wrote about in my last blog post. The CT scanner technician said that when he performed CT scans back east they "always had to do the rectal scan." He hated watching the patients suffer during what he referred to as "a crappy time in their lives."

Normally you get a CT scan when things aren't going so great, health-wise (unless you have a fetish and excellent health insurance). In the middle of a scary CT scan, a technician announces that he must do a rectal screening and the poor patient already filled to every possible brim with nasty barium, simply can't take any more. This technician said that announcing the rectal contrast scan is sort of the icing on the cake -- (is that like a bad choice of words?) He said (and this was his perception from what I could gather) the patient's emotions around the rectal contrast part of the scan became over time, too much for the technician to deal with. When he left New York, he said he was never going to do CT scans again if those scans involved rectums and/or people. Yet, here he is in California, living among 38 million assholes, still performing CT scans. Now that's what I call courage.

Then the technician and I discussed my photo necklace because that was the only article of clothing I was wearing that had to be removed for the scan. (These folks are seriously laid back).

I thought I'd have to remove all my clothing, compression bandaging too, and get into a tiny hospital gown that covered my front (or backside) and maybe half of my butt.) But I was still fully clothed. Hey, I could do this more often!

The technician told me he thought the picture of me on my necklace looked "just like a photo of the Dalai Lama." (not some horror movie actor as Chris had said previously). Then the technician went off on a discussion of what he might ask the Dalai Lama if he met him some place on the street? (Random.) (And I totally think it would depend on where you met him). Then the technician turned to read the inscription on the back of the photo part of the necklace which says, "peel your image from the mirror" (from the Derek Walcott poem). Then the technician started talking about reading "all those Carlos Castaneda books" and how after reading many of them, he had a dream.

In the dream, Carlos Castaneda and the technician (they were much younger then) were walking together, side by side, and after a short walk, Carlos (they were on a first name basis) instructed the technician to look into a mirror.

Then the technician told me that in this dream when he looked into a mirror he had long black hair! (Dude. Awesome!)

When the technician awoke from the dream, his friends told him it was bad luck if you could see yourself in the mirror in a dream. (Dude. Seriously.)

When the scan was finished and I arose from the table to leave, the technician asked if I needed his help putting my necklace on? So I took him up on his offer. It felt like a very tender moment. Why would he help me do this? I must really be getting old to even notice such things. For him, the experience was probably like helping an old lady cross the street though he isn't much younger than I. Getting this kind of attention from a person in the medical field is not normal. But then, neither was this technician.

The technician told me that he had been studying Tibetan Buddhism long enough to understand that if you meet the Dalai Lama, you're supposed to ask something really off the wall. Then the technician escorted me back to the lobby. I will see him again next scan unless he gets a clue about the asshole-to-CT technician ratio in California.

The CT scan was not very traumatizing in and of itself. What's more traumatizing is what the scan *might* reveal. Even if the scan doesn't reveal a tumor or cancer or malformed, swastika'd - out intestines, it reveals layers of body fat and body fat is as bad as cancer to a lot of people.

If I met the Dalai Lama on the street, I'd ask him the results of his scan. (That question is pretty off the wall.) He'd take a few moments to recover after meeting his mirror image (aka me). Then he'd tell me that in his scan they discovered compassion, reverence for life, love and a great sense of humor. And to the Dalai Lama's response, I'd reply, "Touche'." Then we'd go grab ourselves a cup of green tea.

P.S. Many thanks to my son, Danny for his myspace photos.