discovery

Here is an unorganized something.

I had a root canal. The whole experience made me feel like a little kid who had just pooped his pants. I had this huge rubber thing attached to my face exposing one tooth. And I couldn't suck in my spit, so I was drooling all over. And I couldn't talk. I kind of grunted to the dentist lady so she could suction out my spit. On the ceiling, which I stared at for a good majority of the 90 minute visit, there appeared a chart about the acidity and sugar content of various beverages. "Sip All Day - Get Tooth Decay". Crafty. It was interesting for about seven minutes. Then I wished there was some kind of art up there.

As I was feeling exposed, awkward and abused, I started thinking about going home to bed. And how ugly I felt. And then I started thinking about my roommates. They were going to go to the cities and help out their youth group. And I could ride along if I found a place to stay. Earlier, I had called my friend Matt, whom I barely know. "If I happened to come to the cities tomorrow, would I have a place to stay?" He figured he could work something out. But by this time, I was thinking, "I don't want to go. I want to go to bed."

And that's when I realized that if I went to bed, I would feel depressed all day long. And even though I didn't really know what would happen if I went to the cities, I figured it would be better than being depressed, so I hung out with Matt and his grandma in her big, old and wonderful house. And I laughed so hard I peed my pants a little.

In other news, yellow man might have cancer around his liver. He's not really that yellow anymore, though. He looks pretty good actually. Last week, I saw a man sicker than I've ever seen anybody. It was eerie. Cancer sucks. It hit me.

I met someone with what's called pure red cell aplasia (aplasia = no growth) a long time ago. This part has been a long time coming. He said that at the time of his diagnosis, sometime in 2007, I think, there had not existed 100 people diagnosed with his disease. It is that rare, and that poorly researched. And he was in a clinical study in order to test the efficacy of new drugs on his condition. It's a type of anemia (you could say anemia means low/ineffective red blood cells) related to the depletion of erythroblasts (the cells that make the red blood cells). A lot of times, when people have anemia, it's because something is killing their red cells or because their red cells aren't working right. This condition was different, because the problem was up higher, you might say, in the process of the formation of the cells.

I feel like life is coming around again. I catch myself smiling for no reason. And I like that. Also, I find myself telling the same stories over and over again, and asking the people around me, "Did I tell you this?" because I can't remember who I told and who I didn't. In fact, I was just going to write something about already mentioning red cell aplasia. I feel like I did.

After all was said and done, the dentist cost $600. But my tooth doesn't hurt anymore. So I guess someone would say that it was worth it. I haven't decided yet. I think dentistry would be a horrible job. Nurses make people feel better. Dentists make people feel worse. Doctors do too, sometimes, but for the most part, the people aren't awake during the worst stuff. It's not fun to feel your head vibrate as a drill goes into your tooth and feel the spatterings of tooth and smell the drill smell. At one point, my bottom eyelid went numb. That was a weird feeling. I'm glad I'm not a dentist.

I'm going to eat Sushi with a band called Bread of Stone today. Yeah...I'm that cool.

Munificent wrote to me. Did I ever tell these people about Munificent? I guess I'll have to save that for a later post, because at the moment, I'm using someone else's computer in someone else's house as I wash my clothes (and someone else's clothes) in someone else's washer and dryer. My friends let me use their house even though they're not here. I thought that was really nice. And I'm eating their popcorn. Truly, does life get better than this?