Bacteria, you guys are on notice.
You want to hear about my trip to the ear, nose, and throat doctor? It’s what weblogs were invented to convey. So I’ve had a sore throat for the past week. Four days I ago I went to the doctor’s to confirm it wasn’t strep (it wasn’t). Today, still in agony, I go back and ask them to look at it again. He takes one look at my tonsils and refers me to a nearby ENT doctor, whose name is Dr. Holmes. (How cool is the internet that I can just link to somebody I’ve just met and semi-introduce him to you?) One of his nurses comes over to my doctor’s place and lets me follow her car to Dr. Holmes’ office. Turns out, it’s way past closing time but he’s willing to consult and do the procedure anyway. By now, it’s just him and his wife, who works with him in his practice. It’s just my family, them, and me in a big doctor’s office. Pretty cool, but it gets better. Dr. Holmes—who turns out to be one of the nicest, funniest, and intelligentest people I’ve met—confirms my doctor’s suspicion that I have a periodontal abscess. I undergo this painless procedure that involves my taking three separate localized anesthetics and culminates in removing the pus from my left tonsils with a needle. He manages to remove about 60 milliliters of pus: It’s like gray whipped cream with flecks of red. My family has this, in retrospect, hilarious look of horror on their faces. Dr. Holmes and I think it’s the coolest thing ever. (It is. If you don’t think that sticking a needle inside yourself to relieve a periodontal abscess, which resolves itself in 60 mL of pus, then you’re clearly not made for sciencing and medicining.) Now I can talk and eat and swallow saliva. Best day ever.