Chanel No. 2, white in color

So Hiromi and I dragged ourselves out of bed this morning for my medical check appt. at 8:30a. I love how efficient the process is, they give you a card with a magnetic strip, a clipboard, and a cup to pee in and send you off to change your clothes and make your donation. Then it's like going thru the line at a cafeteria, first stop height, weight, blood pressure stations. A quick check of the eyes then it's into the EKG room to make sure the ticker's in good shape. Then the listening test - I think I failed this one (or at least that's Hiromi's opinion). After that it's the ultrasound to make sure that there are no aliens growing in my stomach (I think they also look at the lungs, heart, liver, etc.). After that, they take some blood for lab tests and then send you off to the dreaded Barium test.

This is the test that I was alluding to in yesterday's blog entry. You first down a cup of soda and small pellets that give you major gas, but you can't burp - you have to hold it! Then you down a cup of barium sulfate while they rotate you around on a moving table as if they are playing the labyrinth game with the barium in your stomach and taking pictures to see who can get the highest score. While I was hoping to post pictures of the white No. 2, they gave me a laxative and the bowl was a cloudy white mess so I figured I'd pass on taking a picture.

The final step in the process is a consultation with the doctor based on the preliminary results. The doctor told me that if I was Japanese, i'd be considered clinically obese and she'd recommend me to have my stomach stapled and perform some other drastic measures - but since I'm American, my weight is perfectly normal and I have nothing to worry about!