Dec. 21 Appointment: Bill is A-OK!

Just back from the long haul to Winston, and Bill is pronounced to be fine. Yay!

Kind of a pointless trip, though. Understatement.

From the alarm going off until the time we got home was nine hours (!) and we only saw Dr. Shen for 8.5 minutes during which time he looked once at Bill's scar. No blood tests, nothin. What the heck???????

He's such a nice doctor, though. He has this grin that looks like he is right on the brink of laughing. It's actually the main thing you notice about him, and he is always grinning like that--even after the surgery. You want to say, "What is funny?" because he looks so happy! So it's hard to complain. Not hard enough, obviously, because I just did. haha

Anyway, in the optional reading section of this post, I demonstrated to Bill, on the way home, that a McDonald's french fry is nearly INDISTINGUISHABLE from a rolled up piece of McDonald's paper napkin, if the napkin is salted OR dipped in ketchup.

Bill actually went along with this demonstration. He keeps insisting we eat at McDonald's, a place that I find more frightening than a haunted house. This was only the third time in my adult life that I've agreed to step inside one.

Anyway, I was sitting there and decided to taste a french fry. But all I could taste was salt. I said, "These are known for being horrible fries, right?" He says, "No! McDonald's fries are supposed to be the best!"

So, having nothing else to do besides wait for him to finish eating, while I listened to the astonishingly thick accents of the people talking around us (how do they retain these ridiculously deep accents while owning television sets and hearing that OTHER PEOPLE DON'T "KEELS BARS EEN THE WUDS WIFF RAHFULLS"??

...wait, where was I going with this story?

...oh yeah, so I got bored and started tasting these french fries and could NOT believe they tasted so much like paper! Except for the salt. And the ketchup.

So I made Bill taste a plain fry, with just salt, and he agreed he could taste nothing but salt. Then I wiped the salt off one and he agreed that there was NO taste at all. Then I dipped a fry in ketchup, and we both agreed it was fantastic. Therefore, the McDonald's ketchup is seriously excellent.

Bill said, "I think McDonald's has simply devised a brilliant ketchup delivery system."

He ACTUALLY said that, and I almost slid out of my chair laughing.

But then I rolled up a piece of my napkin and chewed on it for a while. It was, and I am serious, better than the french fry--had MORE flavors going on! So I got him to try a piece of napkin rolled up, and he AGREED that it was better than the fries.

Then we dipped the napkin in salt, and it EQUALLED the fries.

Then we dipped pieces of napkin in ketchup, and they were BETTER than the fries!

A man at a nearby table was watching us, with a concerned expression on his face and, this is true...he held a french fry in midair....it had been on the way to his mouth...all during the napkin portion of our luncheon experiment.

So, in short: the trip was a worthless Medicare-billable piece of wasted time, EXCEPT that Bill and I are now Firsthand Witnesses to the fact that McDonald's napkins taste better than their fries. We invite--nay, encourage--you to try this yourself.

Next appointment: January 6th with Dr. Torti. That's when we get the prescription for starting the chemo, and then things will be moving again. I'll keep writing on Sundays, just to stay in touch.

Love to all, and kudos to McDonald's everywhere for the world's greatest ketchup delivery system, if you're willing to eat the napkins.

Love,
B&B