too much information
Yesterday I was taking the BART back from guitar class with my friend (the one who wrote the Chinese chocolate chip cookie poem). We were talking about learning to play guitar chords, and she pointed out that I have long fingers. I told her that when I was in junior high, my mom was afraid that I had that disease that Abe Lincoln had, Marfan syndrome. Some of the symptoms of Marfan syndrome include long fingers and toes, also known as arachnodactyly (check), scoliosis (check), and myopia (check). So I went to a doctor, who gave me an echocardiogram to look for potential heart problems. He told me that everything seemed ok, and that I probably didn't have anything to worry about. (Apparently genetic tests are now available, but Marfan syndrome is normally diagnosed clinically.)
I had pretty much forgotten about all of this until yesterday, but then today I made the mistake of looking up Marfan syndrome on Wikipedia. I learned that Marfan symptoms sometimes don't appear until later in life, and now I'm afraid that my heart is going to fall apart. (The most common cause of sudden death among Marfan sufferers is rupture of the aorta, also known as aortic dissection.) If it wasn't for the internet, I would be without a care in the world (at least until my premature death at the age of 30 to 40 from a torn aorta), but now I'm going to be spending my time wondering whether my retina is about to detach from my eye socket.
After I told my friend about the Marfan syndrome worries of my youth (and began to wonder if maybe some genetic testing would be a good idea), she told me that she once had a lump in her breast that the internet convinced her was a rare and invasive form of cancer. (It turned out not to be.) I told her that I had a lump in my breast once, too, and then we started talking about mammograms. I told her that my favorite part of the mammogram was the metallic stickers with arrows on them that the technician gave me. (You're supposed to decorate your boob with them so the metallic arrows point toward the potentially cancerous lump in your breast.) At this point in our conversation, it occurred to me that the BART passengers in my vicinity now knew all about my metallic boob stickers. And now the internet does, too. I have no idea why I just wrote about that.
I had pretty much forgotten about all of this until yesterday, but then today I made the mistake of looking up Marfan syndrome on Wikipedia. I learned that Marfan symptoms sometimes don't appear until later in life, and now I'm afraid that my heart is going to fall apart. (The most common cause of sudden death among Marfan sufferers is rupture of the aorta, also known as aortic dissection.) If it wasn't for the internet, I would be without a care in the world (at least until my premature death at the age of 30 to 40 from a torn aorta), but now I'm going to be spending my time wondering whether my retina is about to detach from my eye socket.
After I told my friend about the Marfan syndrome worries of my youth (and began to wonder if maybe some genetic testing would be a good idea), she told me that she once had a lump in her breast that the internet convinced her was a rare and invasive form of cancer. (It turned out not to be.) I told her that I had a lump in my breast once, too, and then we started talking about mammograms. I told her that my favorite part of the mammogram was the metallic stickers with arrows on them that the technician gave me. (You're supposed to decorate your boob with them so the metallic arrows point toward the potentially cancerous lump in your breast.) At this point in our conversation, it occurred to me that the BART passengers in my vicinity now knew all about my metallic boob stickers. And now the internet does, too. I have no idea why I just wrote about that.
posted by ads at 1:07 AM
2 Comments:
my favorite part of the mammogram
See, this is why your blog rocks... who else could come up with a favorite part of a mammogram? :)
In the immortal words of our governor, "It's not a toomah."
Thanks! You know, in high school I used to play tennis with a girl whose last name was Touma. When people found out her name, they invariably busted out the Kindergarten Cop impression, which pissed her off. It made me happy, though, because she was kind of bitchy and cheated all the time. She also claimed that she pierced her own navel at the dinner table, but that's neither here nor there.
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