Friday, August 22, 2014

Close Encounters of The Bird Kind

One of the many "poison pills" I take on a regular basis is Coumadin. It's generic name is Warfarin and if you take a look, you'll see it's an ingredient of many brands of rat poison. It works by making a rat's blood so thin that it bleeds to death. Kind of gruesome when you think about it, but in small doses it keeps my blood a bit thinner than normal so I don't have clots forming in my bloodstream. With something so potent, you have to keep a close watch on how thin your blood is getting or you'll end up like a rat and bleed to death from a little scratch. That's why I have a blood test done about once a month.

I had my regular appointment a few days ago and parked across the street from the clinic. Returning to the parking lot, I was suddenly accosted by a small bird. Not just once. I was dive-bombed by some sort of sparrow at least four times before I got to the safety of the car. My wife had been waiting on me and laughed as I got in. "Bird problems?" she asked. She said the bird had been attacking everyone that walked past it's tree. It was probably protecting it's nest, but I found it a bit hard to not take it personal. Birds don't like me.

I park my car next to my house, under a gigantic tree. I'm not sure what kind it is, maybe a maple, but it's been around for probably a century. No matter how often I wash the car, it is covered in bird poop within an hour of parking under the tree. It doesn't matter what the season is. Winter, spring, summer, fall are all the same to the birds. And I don't think that many birds nest in that tree. You don't see them much until you pull under the tree with a clean car. It's like a clarion call for anything with feathers to come empty it's bowels.

Speaking of cars, my wife was traumatized a few days ago when she tried to renew her driver's license and failed the vision test. She got an official state I.D. card instead. It's the first time since she was a teenager that she hasn't been legally permitted to drive. She hasn't actually driven a car in about six or seven years and the last time she went in to renew they forgot the eye test. Otherwise she probably would have lost it then. Still, it was upsetting for her, another reminder that she can barely see anything. She hasn't read a book in about ten years...and she's a former reading teacher. Kind of ironic when you think about it.

On other health related issues, I had a MRI scan of my head done yesterday. When renal cancer metastasizes, it tends to go to the lungs, bones, liver, and brain. Everything else has been scanned at least once, it was time to check my head. I'm meeting with my oncologist this coming Thursday to see if they found a brain.

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