dr. szeto

I always think I know what's wrong with me. I always have a logical diagnosis in my mind when I walk in the office, and await simple confirmation. My doctor knows this and hates it about me. I'm going to attempt to relate our dialogue right here. You need to read his words in a stacatto asian dialect, high-pitched and loud, giving equal emphasis to each syllable with the occasional hand chop for effect. He yells at me. He always does this. I just laugh at him. He's little.

I recite my symptoms. I know them well. He says, hand in air, "I already know what you have!" (always an exclamation) "You have a sore throat but not a sore throat, right!" I nod. "You have dizziness, right! You have eyes all squinty all the time and a headache, right!" I nod. "You are so tired by noon and have no energy, right!" I tell him he is exactly right. "I know what this is!"

So tell me already.

"You have sinus infection! It is not bad enough to cry about or you would not have waited three weeks to see me! It is only bad enough to whine about, so you wait and now it is bad!"

I hang my head. Nod.

"And you no come to see me about your diabetes! Why is this!!"

And on and on and on. And he wonders why I never show up.

So, I didn't know I had a sinus infection and now I am taking these huge pills as big as a peanut in the shell and they make me sicker than the sinus problem. I belch like a logger, and five days into it, no help. Not really. I am sick of being sick. I am sick of taking antibiotics. I am sick of not having energy to do the things I need to do, like paint the kitchen.

Let's talk about that, shall we? It has, as always, turned into more of a project than originally intended. We will now replace the countertops, which is a great thing, but not as easy as just painting. Simplify simplify. Why is that so expensive? eh? I have removed the cabinet doors and the hardware. I have filled the holes with putty and broken-off toothpicks and white glue. I have sanded the residue. Next, I will strip the paint with a heat gun. This is new to me. I was prepared to buy caustic, flammable liquids to do the stripping, but my husband said, "Why don't you use a heat gun?" Well, I didn't know I could. But I can. So I will. The wonder of tools. Apparently you heat the paint, it bubbles and you scrape it off before it cools. I'm sure there will be a learning curve and small fires on my kitchen floor. Not to worry. I have an extinguisher and I don't like that floor anyway.

In finishing these projects, which were all begun five years ago, I find I have far too much stuff that I am not going to need. I knew that, but I've been hanging onto so many things because I really wasn't sure what I was going to do with this house, and making one home of two has been a process (see former yard sale entries related to selling his stuff.) Now that I'm on a roll, I'm going to have a Halloween yard sale. In the dark. You should come. I have great shit.