Here's the upside to having a CAT scan on your birthday

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Tuesday, April 19: While out power-walking at lunch, my eyes begin to water.

Wednesday, April 20: Eyes (actually only the right eye) still watery and itchy. Now carrying wads of Kleenex in my pocket. Still walking at lunch.

Thursday, April 21: Skip the walk. Eye still watery. Pass the Kleenex. Call the doctor and set up appointment for Friday morning. Take Benedryl. Sleep like a baby.

Friday, Aprill 22: Doctor gives me a cortisone shot and a prescription for Amoxcel. I also take a Sudafed that night (a mistake). Later, realizing my mistake, I find myself watching Headliners and Legends at 3 am. Bummer.

Saturday, April 23: I wake up with some sinus pain and eyes still watery. Attend Pesach Seder at in-laws, while dabbing eyes with omnipresent Kleenex. Stay late, help clean up. Dry over 40 wine and water glasses, move tables around. Get home, take Benedryl, sleep like baby.

Sunday, April 24: Wake up with sinus pain. Pass on breakfast at in-laws. Later, reach on-call doc who revokes the Amoxcel and prescribes Tequin and Mucinex. Look up Tequin and discover it's what they prescribe these days for gonorrhea. Heh.

Monday, April 25: Wake up feeling OK. Two hours later, at work, my head is on my desk and I am whimpering like a baby. "Please stop the pain. Just cut off my head and be done with it." Go home and put hot towels over my right eye. I feel like I've been hit in the face with a fast ball. No, that's an exaggeration. I feel like I've been stabbed in the face with a knitting needle, where my right eye meets the bridge of my nose.

Put hot towels over entire face. I think of Albert Anastasia, who was shot to death while sitting in a barber chair with hot towels on HIS face. Given how I feel, it would be a blessing.

Call the doctor. He sets up an appointment for the next morning. "We might want you to have a CAT scan." I hang up and call my health insurance provider. "How much will a CAT scan cost me?" The answer is not encouraging.

Tuesday, April 26: I check in at the front desk. "Name and Birthdate?" I tell them. They respond with a smile: "Happy Birthday!" It will be the first of many times I hear that at the clinic today. It's actually the second-best part of the day.

I see the doctor. He's concerned. He sets up an appointment with an ENT specialist for early afternoon. I go home and put hot towels over my eye. Finally, after eating lunch and watching the noon-time episode of The West Wing, I begin to feel a bit better.

Later that afternoon another desk nurse wishes me a happy birthday. The ENT specialist arrives and he looks like he's about 23 years old. I have neckties older than this guy. He shines a flashlight up my nostrils and in my ears.

Just when I think, "Hmmm, not so bad," the bottom drops out.

The nurse arrives, wheeling in a cart holding -- [shudder] -- an endoscope.

My hopes are dashed.

The doctor sprays a liquid up each nostril. "This will kill the pain." But will it kill me, I'm thinking, because right this instant I would rather die than have him slide that thing up my nose. No. No. No. No.

He does it anyway. "You have some accumulated fluid build-up, but not the worst I've seen."

He orders a CAT scan for, like, now. Instantly.

I'm ready for this possibility. "Can I get it tomorrow," I suggest, "because, you know, right this instant, the pain is gone and I'm feeling like I turned a corner." It's the truth. Or maybe it's just the adrenaline talking. I smile encouragingly.

The doctor has thing thing where, while he's talking to me, his eyes are fluttering nearly closed and then when he stops talking he looks at me with his eyes open.

"You know," flutter, flutter, "you might feel good right now," flutter flutter, "but this infection could suddenly get really bad." He pauses and looks at me. "I had a patient who waited too long," flutter flutter, "and when he came in for the CAT scan his eye was bulging out of it's socket." He pauses, looks at me and his eyes are, well, bulging out of their sockets.

I go downstairs to the CAT scan unit. Another chorus of "Happy Birthday!" When I'm done, I wait outside the lab until they tell me they've sent the results upstairs.

In the exam room, the doc and I look at the pictures.

"Not the worst I've seen but still pretty significant." He then writes down all the new medications he is prescribing. Nasal saline spray. Eyedrops. More nasal spray. Skip the Benedryl. "It dries you out. We want the fluid to come out." He prescribes a substitute for the Sudafed. There's more, but I can't remember it all. See the picture (left) -- and THAT isn't even all of it.

The nurse comes in to give me more shots.

"Step away from the window, sugar. We don't anyone to see you when you pull down your shorts." She injects me in the right hip with another cortisone shot; she gets me in the left hip with another anti-biotic. She puts a Tazz band-aid over each spot. "You'll feel those tomorrow." But, you know, I never did. A miracle!

"I want you to please go sit in the waiting room for 20 minutes," says the doctor, "just in case you have an adverse reaction to the shots."

"What symptom am I looking for," I ask.

"You might pass out, feel nauseous, get hives, rapid heartbeat, and so forth."

I don't. Pass out, I mean. Or the other stuff either. I go home, 4 hours after I arrived. Miss Julie is very happy to see me.

The boys are with their grandparents for the evening, so we enjoy my birthday dinner together. We watch a double episode of The West Wing, followed by a double episode of Sex and the City followed by a double episode of The Daily Show. It is finally the best part of the day.

"Well," I say, "I guess this is a birthday I won't soon forget." Miss Julie smiles at me in that way she does. It makes me glad I lived long enough to enjoy this moment. Life is good, given that I've been pumped full of more medications that I've taken in the previous ten years of my life up to this point.

Unfortunately, one of the medications keeps me awake and I find myself, alone at 3 am, watching a double episode of Headliners and Legends. Bummer.

Wednesday, April 27: I go back for a follow-up. The ENT specialist says I look a lot better and the truth is, I feel a lot better. Nonetheless, he vetoes my weekend trip to Detroit to see my daughter in her high school production of Pippin. Wah! I knew it was going to be a problem, but I was hoping I could get there anyway.

I go into work but I leave, mid-afternoon, still feeling a bit tired. No sense in pushing it.

Earlier, the doc told me he wanted to see me again next Monday and strongly urged me to call him if I take a turn for the worse between now and then.

"You know, doc, the earth is going to turn one time on its axis and next year I'm going to get this again. What do I do?"

He smiles. "You'll call me before then and we'll work out a plan."

Fair enough.