Loose Ends, a touch of existentialism and another banana split

So there are a few open ends I need to tie up from my previous two posts. In Agassiz Banana I mentioned some health concerns and an anxiety regarding the health of my kidney. I mentioned these concerns to my doctor and she explained that the results that had suddenly appeared a couple of months ago were simply the result of a different person running the tests. In other words, any two people can interpret the request for a battery of tests to mean two slightly different things, one focusing on these twelve important factors and another just doing the full array of seventeen. Once the person who ran the full array did that it added the categories into my prior test results, all of which I can see comparatively side by side on my computer screen. So to me it appeared as if some new information suddenly appeared and it sounded like warning signs. Once that mode entered into my brain I believe I became hyper aware of anything and everything that seemed unusual and I exaggerated into more proof that things were going wrong.

Some of the other symptoms that I mentioned to my doctor that seemed to corroborate my fears about things starting to go wrong were either easily explained away as symptoms of the meds I'm on or perhaps the normal machinations of an aging human body. A few were simply unknowns but in their opinion, unrelated to my kidney. In fact their official prognosis was that the numbers all look good.

In some way that news is both good and bad. Of course I welcome the good news that things are going well, but that means I will put off selfish want for actual need and responsibility. Were I to receive the bad news it would be the justification for throwing caution to the wind and just doing the things I really want to do without consideration to anyone else's feelings or needs.

It's like in my mind my emotional bags are all packed and ready to go and just waiting for the day I get the news that it's now or never. Meanwhile in the real world its all work and little play, cat's in the cradle and such.

More often than not we're all living some version of M. Ward's song Chinese Translation. Do you know this song? It's similar to Harry Chapin's Cat's in the Cradle in the fact that they're both short essays on the human condition (birth, growth, emotionality, aspiration, conflict, and mortality), but cat's cradle makes you want to cry and chinese translation leaves you pondering your part in this infinite experiment in which we all eventually shuffle off this mortal coil.

Sorry, didn't mean to drag you down into the depths of my personal existentialism. Allow me to move on to my post, Moby Tooth (and the interconnectedness of all things great and small). When last I spoke of it, there was an impending dentist appointment and a story to finish. I'll try to give you the quick version.

My dentist took some xrays but couldn't find the problem even though she could clearly see there was an issue. She had me see another dentist the following morning who's expertise was in these things. He took a look but also couldn't find the problem. He asked me to run down to his Peabody office for a 3D scan of the area, which I did. The next morning he was able to see the problem and unfortunately the tooth needed to be pulled. Now, there's a whole second story that has evolved from the tooth being pulled, but if you recall... the story was actually about how something that started 20 years ago, continues to impact my life today and obviously (at least to me) into my future. Its part of the interconnectedness of everything.

And finally... I have another banana split to add to the Banana Split Folly Tour.

We recently went to White Farms Ice Cream in Ipswich, where I tried their version of the ice cream treat at the center of my folly. This thing was pretty big and I wasn't able to finish it on my own. Eventually Annie attempted to help me but even with her help we only finished about 3/4's of it.

I don't want to get into the business of suggesting that one is better than another, especially since its probably a personal thing for each of us, as to what qualifies as better. I will say this was the biggest I've had in a while, though I seem to recall that Kimball's Farm in Westford has a huge banana split. That is coming, but for now White Farms is the biggest I've had in the folly tour.