the portugese spanish frenchman via chile

who had the most amazing name that i can never repeat, but for fun let's call him juan pelletier...just so you can imagine with me the pure definition of melting pot lineage...

which is what i was doing for the first minute or so of his appointment (what kind of parents give their kid a name like that?) while sort of vaguely asking questions and listening to him speak with a portugese accent he had recently cultivated after living in the azores for years....

and then i snapped back to reality as it became apparant that this was going to be a pre-op visit, not a run of the mill meet and greet/establish care, etc. which was something i wasn't quite prepared for...but then, nothing i've done in the past 2 weeks has been, so there is this sort of comforting feeling to that particular brand of panic i get now.

anyway
achalasia. scheduled him for an esophagram (how proud todd would be!) and went to precept. wherein the problems really started for me. for you, let's just say you're all welcome for the heads up. i'll be widely available for thanking at the next PPS.

achalasia. and not just your run of the mill achalasia, the good kind. the kind that's caused by parasites picked up in south america while you're say...hanging out in chile. that's right, the chagus kind. the kind that you have to order a lab that no one has heard of to confirm. the kind that there may be no treatment for and may expand your esophagus to the size of an inflated tube sock. the old school kind with stripes. the kind that you'll need surgery for regardless of the outcome.

that's my favorite line here so far... "well, you have xyz. we can open you up and fix it if you want. there's no guarantee the surgery will work, or that you'll feel any better afterwards but you need to decide if you can live with xyz or not. when you can't live with it anymore, give us a call back."

on the bright side of today, if the chagus wasn't enough, i saw like 4 hernias of all shapes and sizes IN A ROW. i'm a hernia magnet, apparantly. and if i ever screw up a hernia presentation again, then shame on me. but there is definitely something to be said for reducing them. that feeling when they get sucked right back inside the abdominal wall is something else. i'm on a mission now to keep a running count for the rest of my time here since i need something to poke fun of.