Friday, April 28, 2017

No Window Into My Soul

Hi, Tumoriffic readers!

That whole thing about spitting out a piece of my skull thing fizzled out so quickly, I forgot to tell everyone what finally happened. Here goes:

1. Apparently, I am still alive.

2. When I got home from the British Virgin Islands, I went and saw Hygeia, Goddess of Otolaryngology. I had given her a heads up, so she had done her research. Apparently, in all of Pubmed, there were no useful articles about what to do when someone spits out a piece of their own skull. That made me feel very special.

Using her holy pharyngoscope, Hygeia could see where the piece had come from, and it was from the source of all of my recent adventures--my poor, tattered clivus.* What she could not see was what was left behind it. There was a scab, and she was disinclined to pick it off. She worried that doing so might rip my meninges** and spray cerebrospinal fluid in her face. I would have found it very embarrassing. 

So, she decided to get a CT scan of the area. After all that fuss, there was a still a layer of bone separating my meninges and brain from the back of my nose/throat. Yawn.

It was sort of anticlimactic, but at least I have a souvenir. Who else do you know who came back from a vacation with a dried out little cube of their own skull? I keep it in my bedside table in a little cardboard soap box from the resort. Everyone in Hygeia's office thought it was neat. I'll show it to you if you want.

Be well,

Tom



* Autocorrect wants to substitute 'cloves' for 'clivus.' Gimme a break, autocorrect! Are you telling me that you don't know basic skull anatomy? (On the other hand, cloves might do nicer things to my breath than rotting clivus.)

** The meninges are the membranes inside your skull that surround your brain like a Ziplock bag full of wet chicken. Meninges was also a minor Greek hero from the Iliad who was responsible for packing everyone's lunches.***

*** Homer left him out of the final draft. You can't prove that's not true, so it basically is.




This is what true love looks like.


1 comment:

  1. Yes you are special. I got an arrowhead in a corn field the other day, but that's nothing like your fizzled out skull thing.

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