— पांच हजार नौ सौ तीन —
Have I mentioned yet that I have an
epidermoid cyst? I just did a search for "cyst" in this journal and nothing came up, so evidently not.
It's a small bump on my upper back, and it's been there for months now. I mentioned it to my primary care physician, Dr. Means, at my appointment June 17, and it had been there a little while before that. So it's been at least four months. I had no idea what it was, so it seemed clear that I should mention it; Dr. Means identified it instantly on sight. He shared with me different options for dealing with it, gave me some printouts to take home, but also said that if it's not bothering me then I would be okay to just leave it for now. Not wanting the hassle of any of the other options, and since it wasn't painful or giving me any issues at the time, I took the option of doing nothing.
Well, that option only lasts so long, I guess. I have to see Dr. Means quarterly in order to keep my PrEP prescription, so I saw him last only about a month ago, on September 16. The cyst still wasn't botering me then so I didn't even mention it.
But, then something happened. This may have been because I did at one point sort of fiddle with it with my fingers, like a moron; or maybe that's a coincidence, I don't know. I try to leave it alone. But then, for maybe a two-week period, I had this constant, if incredibly subtle and minor, sensation somewhere in the space between pain and discomfort. Clearly I needed to bring it up to my doctor, but I wasn't sure I could tolerate it until the next appointment I had on the books, which was December 16. I emailed the doctor's office last week about it, and got a response saying Dr. Means had no availability earlier than that but would I be okay seeing one of his colleagues. Absolutely.
I did not see until Saturday morning at around 8:30 that they had suggested an appointment Saturday morning at 9:00. Well, that clearly wasn't going to work. And even though this was on the Virginia Mason portal and notifications get sent to my personal Comcast.net email account, I had last been sending messages around 4:00 on Friday, and then it went out of my head when I left work. I didn't realize they even did appointments on weekends. Still, I had to follow up and ask for a reschedule. I finally got a response yesterday, and they booked my new appointment for 9:00 this morning.
Here's one of the many benefits of the new office location for PCC: Virginia Mason is all of 0.4 miles away; I can walk right over there. It's barely more than a 10-minute walk, which really opens up my options for scheduling appointments. There's a straighter route simply down 5th Avenue and then up Seneca Street, but today I took the more scenic route through Freeway Park. It was quite lovely, aside from the three homeless people camped out in the park's underpass beneath 8th Avenue.
Of course, now that I actually had an appointment about this, the pain is basically gone again. But, I'm too afraid of it returning; I need to have something done about this. There was a doctor in residence who saw me first, who evidently took a look at the bump, even measured it (it seems to be a couple centimeters in diameter now), and then went to tell the regular doctor his opinion. When the regular doctor came in, she said, "I completely agree," and told me I should set up an appointment with General Surgery to have it removed. She even said that insurance should cover the cost.
I took off my shirt for the first guy. I guess I should have known the regular doctor would also want to look at it when she came in, but with my shirt back on and re-tucked in, I just pulled the back of my collar down—that's how high on my back the cyst is. The first doctor had pressed the bump a little, asking if it hurt. A tiny bit, yes. The more pertinent detail is that the tenderness caused by that pressing is still being felt even as I type this. I'll be glad when this stupid thing is removed.
This whole thing, more than anything, is just making me feel . . . old. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I'll be 50 on my next birthday. This feels related. I was asked if I had anything like this before. Nope. I'd sure love to never have anything like it again, and maybe I won't, but I have a feeling I have more unexpected weird shit happening to my body in the back half of my life. Fun!
— पांच हजार नौ सौ तीन —
— पांच हजार नौ सौ तीन —
I reviewed a Netflix movie release last night, the second streamer release I've reviewed in the past month. I've got 14 movies logged on my movie review blog for October, although I only wrote full reviews of 11 of them. I went to the theater 12 times, but I am counting the opening night of the Tasveer Film Festival when we watched three short films, and I only wrote about those
on my personal blog. The other two full reviews were for major movie releases on streamers, the first on Apple TV, and this one on Netflix: Kathryn Bigelow's
A House of Dynamite.
I did have a bit of a middle ground for this one though, in terms of "in-theater." Laney came over and we watched it together in the Braeburn Condos theater. Nowhere near as big a screen as at AMC but way bigger than either of our TVs—and with actual theater seats.
I scheduled this for 5:30, which gave me barely more than half an hour to make myself a sandwich and chai to bring down and have during the movie. I was pretty rushed with that, but it worked out.
We both quite liked the movie. I finally listened to
The Big Picture podcast episode about it this morning—they dropped the episode on Friday and I usually listen immediately, but I didn't want any spoilers—and they both really kind of shit on the third act. They illustrated that they got the point, and yet to me they seemed to miss the point still. They wanted something from that third act that the movie was pointedly not doing, but they also actually said Idris Elba's performance was bad, and I didn't get that at all.
Anyway, I found it well worth watching. Hardly a classic, and I'll forget all about it sooner than later, but that's hardly remarkable given how many movies I watch (I'm up to 80 that I've reviewed so far in 2025, with two full months left to go so I will likely at least crack 100—and that's not counting movies I've watched at home that I was either rewatching or did not review).
Laney and I chatted for a little while after the movie. She almost took me up on my offer to walk her home, but when she saw it was raining she decided to take the bus. I went upstairs and wrote my review, during which Shobhit and Sachin got home. Shobhit was unusually buzzed; he had eaten three quarters of the pizza they had gone out to share and also had apparently quite a bit of wine. He was talking a bit too loud and I had to shut the bedroom door to cut down on the noise more than once.
After I finished the review, though, I went out to the living room and we all watched the season finale of
Slow Horses on Apple TV. I need to cancel my subscription so it doesn't auto-renew now; I'll be focusing on Netflix stuff the next couple of months. I was in bed shortly after that.
— पांच हजार नौ सौ तीन —
[posted 12:33pm]
