It’s one of those dreary, drizzly days that puts me in a dismal humour; lacking in motivation to do anything other than potter around the house, noting all the little jobs that need doing, but not doing them.  Consumed by ennui, yet unwilling to do anything to break myself out of it.

The most pressing thing on my mind is what to have with the chicken pie that I have planned for my dinner.  I don’t have to make the pie, but I can’t be bothered to move the Little Dog’s water bowl so that I can open the freezer door to hunt for frozen vegetable accompaniments.  I think I’ll just have pie and pie for tea.

Tempted as I am to return to bed for a snooze, I shall resist.

Days like these are important, if only to make you not want to have them too frequently.

Ultrasonography is witchcraft

There are a number of medical imaging techniques that can be employed to look inside a person’s body.  I get x-rays, and x-ray images are easily interpreted by anybody with a basic knowledge of anatomy.  CT scans provide cross-sections of the body, which again can be pretty easily visualised by anybody who knows what goes where in the body and  who can imagine what a body might look like if it’s put through a virtual meat slicer.

Ultrasounds though?  Honestly?  No way, it’s all just made up, I’m certain of it.

Having had a couple of ultrasounds recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that radiologists’ minds aren’t right.  I mean, just look at this schematic:

How can tell if you have one of these from one of these?

Anyway, my radiologist yesterday saw “something” in the region of my left inferior parathyroid gland, but it didn’t look like the second image above.  I knew there was something going on when she spent about ten minutes pressing and probing the same area, asking me to swallow, more pressing and probing.  All in silence.  She was very good, went over the background of what she was looking for and explaining what was what. She told me there was something there, but it’s atypical of an adenoma, it might be something on or near or associated with my oesophagus.  She’s going to consult with her colleague and probably organise different imaging to have a look at it.  It’s probably an undiagnosed siamese twin.  Or a tumour.

But this is it, isn’t it? Imaging looks at things, ultrasound essentially listens to things.  How can you tell what something looks like by bouncing soundwaves off it?   I know I’m a person of science, but some things just do not compute in my brain.  Like x-ray crystallography, that’s a load of old bollocks too.  No disrespect to Franklin, Watson and Crick, but it takes a very special mind to be able to do that sort of thing.

Nil points

It’s Eurovision tonight: the annual event that was initially conceived to bring the countries of Europe together in song, to celebrate our differences and similarities by demonstrating how much we all love a good sing song.  These days it’s just another excuse for queers to get together for a party and for the rest of us (queers) to bemoan the competition’s politicisation and the fact that everybody in Europe hates the UK.

I haven’t watched this spectacular for years, but tonight I might settle down with Belgian beer, French wine and German dog and immerse myself in the glamour.