Testing times

The search to discover why I’m dizzy took an unexpected turn on Friday.

I got my ear swapped because my hearing is now so bad that I can’t even modulate my voice. I think I’m speaking really loudly, but my voice is actually barely audible. It’s driving me NUTS, but the doctor doesn’t want to syringe it until he’s sure there isn’t an infection.

Following the swab, the doctor cheerily clicked through my blood test results page by page, perkily saying “normal!” a lot. He even said I had zero risk factors for a heart attack, despite my dad almost dying from one and his sister dropping dead in the shower from one. He said I must take after the other side of the family.

Then he got to my urine test and said “oh”. It’s never good when a doctor says “oh”.

It turns out I have something called microhaematuria, which means there was blood in my sample that is invisible to the naked eye. I had about four times the normal amount of blood in my urine. And it turns out a a urine test a year ago wasn’t too crash hot either.

He announced I’d better have a CT scan just to rule out liver or kidney cancer. At least I think those were the two cancers he mentioned, I was a bit shocked and not really taking it in properly.

It was only as he was waving me out the door that he said the chance I had those cancers was very low, but it was best to check it out and get onto it early. I wryly noted that it wasn’t exactly early since the problem started a year ago, but he assured me the two cancers were “slow moving”.

How comforting.

So I called to make an appointment to get the scan and decided to book it for after my birthday so as not to spoil the celebrations. For some bizarre reason the bloke who took my call was up for a major chat. He proceeded to tell me about his favourite movies in extensive detail after I told him my name was House, as one of his top 10 flicks is “Life in a House”.

I have become a person that blokes like to chat – and chat and chat – to in my middle age. The same thing happened with the picture whisperer last week.

Anyways, I felt a bit sorry for myself after that because I wasn’t in the mood for more blah news and tests (I also need to pony up three additional urine samples this week, sigh.)

Fortunately the universe decided to send me alcohol (just in case you didn’t read Drinks with Al on Saturday). I opened the front door to discover three bottles of cider (for Australian Cider Day, which was on Saturday), including the most delicious cider I have tasted in a long time, Napoleone Pear Cider. There was also a bottle of Plantation Stiggins’ Fancy Pineapple Rum that I can’t wait to try. It’s made with fresh chunks of tropical pineapple – rather than syrup – macerated in the Plantation Original Dark rum, while pineapple rinds are infused in Plantation 3 Stars White Rum and then further distilled. Then both are blended together. Yum! You can read more about it by clicking here.

On Saturday I schlepped lots of junk onto the nature strip for the twice-yearly council throw out. Then I drove the youngest and her friends to a restaurant that specialises in metre-long pizzas for her 15th birthday celebration. A fabulous night was had by all while I trudged around the Woolies doing the weekly shop. I still had half an hour to kill at the end, so I went to the pub for a glass of rose, where I was regarded as quite the weirdo for drinking on my own. Wot-eva! I sat there trying to work out how to put videos with fun captions on them onto my Drinks Digest Instagram story.

Confession: I have never created videos to put onto an Instagram story, despite being a social media manager. I have enough trouble keeping up with the current parade of social media stuff, let alone introducing new workload. But a friend I walked with on Saturday morning assure me it’s THE DONE THING so I think I worked it out. Seems like a lot of trouble for something that disappears in 24 hours, but hey. And then something I hadn’t posted on my story ended up on my Facebook story, which I have also never used. I panicked that I’d been hacked but it turned out to be an eff up by my previous employers, which made it look like I was drinking Champagne for brekkie.

Sadly, there was no swim in my Sunday afternoon because the weather was appalling. So I snuggled with DD on his couch while we both said “what?” at each other a lot.

Then we went out for cheap and cheerful Thai food at the very middle aged time of 5pm. (Sorry about all the pics being sideways, I’ll sort that out later.)

After dinner DD played old favourites on YouTube to cheer me up. He baulked at Bananarama’s “Venus”, then made me watch the original first, which was good, but they all looked like they were stoned out of their minds.

Whereas watching Sarah, Siobhan and Keren bop around reminded me that the film clip pretty much set my dancing style for the next 30 years and counting.

However, this week’s theme song is …