Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Day 3828

The doctor wasn't pleased with my progress this morning. "I froze the hell out of those things last time and the roots are still there," he told me. It was a little unsettling to learn that keratosis blemishes had roots. I've watched enough science fiction movies to know that having something growing inside you with roots is not a good thing. "We're going to have to scrape these," the doctor told his nurse. I had visions of sandpaper and asked the doctor if it would hurt. "You won't feel a thing," he told me.

The doctor was correct. The anesthetic they injected in my face was pretty effective. I closed my eyes because I didn't want to see what the doctor was actually doing. After a while I began to smell something burning. "Is that me," I asked? I couldn't feel anything, but there was a definite smell of burning flesh. "This is how we remove these growths now," the doctor told me. "It is very effective. "Will this bleed a lot," I asked the doctor? "I doubt if it will bleed at all," He told me. "There is already a scab." The nurse placed a small bandage under my eye and the doctor said he'd see me again in four months. I was good to go in less than fifteen minutes.

This wasn't what I expected at all. The entire procedure was much less traumatic than a trip to the dentist. I'm glad I don't have to go back for another four months. A trip to the doctor in today's post-pandemic world is still a little unsettling. There are rules about how many people can ride in the elevator and lots of social distancing circles on the floors. So many people are wearing masks that you just know that some of them have got to be sick. I definitely wouldn't want to work in a hospital environment right now. You can tell these guys know that they are at ground zero. I always have to fill out a questionnaire saying that I haven't traveled anywhere in the last fourteen days and haven't come into contact with anyone who has been exposed to the virus. How would they even know if I was telling the truth?

The rest of my day was uneventful. We're still walking extremely early, but you can tell that the temperature keeps rising. Summer is here. There was a breeze this morning, but Dawn seemed a little tired. We'll probably try a shorter route tomorrow morning. Dawn loves these walks in the woods and enjoys smelling things, but we don't want to push her too hard. She's getting older and isn't as obsessed with exercise as Janet and I seem to be.

If I were writing a dystopian novel, it would be hard to top what is happening right now in real life. People around the world are tired of being quarantined and are becoming restless. The virus is still here though and keeps reappearing like a forest fire that can't be extinguished. Social unrest is growing everywhere and there is already a shortage of Xanax. Everyone is upset about something. Truckers say they are going to stop delivering to cities with protests. People want to go back to the beach. Supply chains are crumbling as workers fall sick in critical industries. Police and emergency workers are under attack at the same time there are massive riots and arson in many cities. Kim Jong-un is blowing up buildings along the South Korean border and a weird little country just appeared right in the middle of Seattle. Basically, it's a total shit show everywhere you look.

This isn't going to end well. We need to get a grip on things in a hurry. It's easy to break something. It's a lot harder to put it back together.

Riley is today's Dalmatian of the Day
Watch of the Day