February 29

From my brain

1 2008

2008

Me 10:03, 29 February 2008 (EST)

I realized last night that I never posted about my visit with the gastroenterologist on Tuesday.

Well, he did the usual round of questions, why I was there, who my other doctors were. Went through oncological history and the post-chemo/radiation follow-up testing. This of course revolved around my liver issues. Then, he did the examination: tapping on various areas of my abdomen, checked breathing with stethoscope, usual stuff. Check my feet and checked my palms as well (no idea what he was looking for there; hairy palms?).

Sat me back up and then we talked some more. Basically...I'm not dying. He made a comment that, "If on March 4th, you could walk up to any voter coming in for the primaries and you would find out that half of them have fatty liver. It's that common." Very few of them are going to get anywhere close to the mid-range damage caused by NAFLD, much less full on NASH (read further in that article).

What he did say then was that I was on the right track. I mentioned I've been losing weight. I mentioned I've been exercising with TheBoy (Tae Kwon Do). I mentioned that my diet doesn't really contain all the bad stuff you'd consider with a term like "fatty liver", mentioning that I use a lot of olive oil in my cooking as well as eat a fair amount of fish (yay for Orthodoxy!). He dug all of it, and said to keep it up.

I go back to him in 3 months. He'd like to see me under 300lbs by then, and I said I'd give it a shot. We'll see how it goes.

On a side note, I was shocked to find out that my boots weigh friggin 4lbs! His scale said I was 309, but my home scale has been saying 296, butt nekkid and after a good healthy one. I went up stairs with my boots on and stood on our scale. Sure enough, 308.

Should I get naked in his office? The receptionist was kinda hot. Then again...the office was' kinda cold. That might not impress her much (then again, what have I to impress her with in warm room?).

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Me 10:51, 29 February 2008 (EST)

Usually I'm doing my morning prayers on the drive in, so I don't listen to the radio. While I was doing my usual morning routine at home (email, the guild forums, roster updates, etc.), Woody & The Wake-Up Call was on the local station I usually listen to in the basement. After a commercial break, he wishes everyone a happy Leap Day.

He then proceeds to relate a "fact" he heard from a listener (or was it a coworker?), "Did you know that 2000 didn't have a leap day? We had one in 2004, and we have one today obviously, but in 2000 we didn't. Apparently they don't have a leap day once every hundred years to correct a minor error in the calendar."

Huh? I knew this to be wrong. Namely because we tried ardently to have our wedding be on Leap Day in 2000. It wasn't until I found out that the travels of our cruise ship were taking us to Mayan ruins on that Tuesday 2/29/2000 that I said, "Uh uh. I wanna see the ruins. We'll just get married on the Sunday sail date."

So, I emailed him...

Subject: Leap Year

Complete opposite of what your listener mentioned. Every century mark there is no leap year EXCEPT for years that are divisible by 1000.

From Wikipedia:

However, some exceptions to this rule are required since the duration of a solar year is slightly less than 365.25 days. Years which are evenly divisible by 100 are not leap years, unless they are also evenly divisible by 400, in which case they are leap years.[1][2] For example, 1600 and 2000 were leap years, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not.

Just wanted to correct your listener. :)

Keep up the great work,

Well, it turns out he read that over the radio...while I was still driving into the office. My friend Jordance heard it on the radio. She thought it funny first because my name was being read on the radio, then for it being utterly butchered by Woody, and third because she doesn't normally listen to country.

Warhol never said that everyone's 15 minutes of fame came all in one spot. I just banked up a good 30 seconds. Woot!

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