Let's Sweat at 4:51 PM

So in the ongoing saga of Luke's smallness (the doctors keep getting worked up because he's not gaining a lot of weight quickly, but he's healthy and eats like a horse, so we're not worried about it), we had to drive down to Indy on Wednesday to get a "sweat test" done. I'm not exactly sure what they analyze in the sweat that could tell them why he's small, but that's beside the point. We drove down at about 7:00, because we had to be at the hospital at 8:45. Even leaving that early (it usually takes about an hour and a half to get down to Indy), we were still late because of rush hour. Living in a smaller town, I'd forgotten about that whole "rush hour" detail.

After the drive, I dropped off the wife and kid and went to park in the enormous hospital parking garage. I'd never heard of paying for parking at a hospital before, but if you park at Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis, you will pay. Not much, but still. I'm just sayin'. Well, we got in and Jessica realized she had forgotten the order for the test to be done. So apparently Wednesday, not wanting to be outdone by Tuesday, wanted to make us both wait for long periods of time instead of just me. Luke doesn't count, because since he only eats, sleeps and plays, he can do that anywhere.

We found out we'd have to wait until the hospital could get a hold of either our pediatrician or the first specialist that we went to (the one that actually ordered the test...confused yet?). Our appointment was at 9:00, and finally at about 10:30, the tech who was testing Luke got a hold of the specialist's office, and they faxed over a copy of the order. This of course begs the question of why they didn't just do that originally. Wouldn't it be convenient for the hospital to just have a file full of test orders? That way we don't have to remember things, and things don't get forgotten before two-hour drives.

The test consisted of putting some foreign substance on Luke's arm, attaching electrodes, and basically shocking this foreign substance into his arm. This substance, I suppose, was supposed to make him sweat in that place on his arm. So they wrapped it with an absorbant material of some sort, and gave us a timer set to 30 minutes so that we could walk around and wait for him to sweat into this pad on his arm. There you go: medicine without all the messy details.

The whole process was finished around 11:15, and I ended up getting to work late. So yesterday, after the annoyances of Tuesday (see the post before this one), I was gone from 7:00 AM until about 8:30 PM. On the plus side though, I remembered to pick up some bee killer and I blasted three bee's nests I found in my mailbox and my shed. There's not a much nastier surprise than opening up the mailbox anticipating DVDs from Netflix, and getting a bunch of bees. While I was out, I also picked up a contraption called a Grass Gator, which is an attachment for a weed eater that has plastic blades instead of string. Anyone that has used a weed eater can tell you that string is awful. So basically I've waged war on all living things around my house. The bunnies under the shed can stay, though. But only because they're cute. If they start getting ugly, I'm buying a shotgun.

Song of the Day: "No More Tears", by Ozzy Osbourne.