For my eyes only

News flash! I have joined the ranks of the bespectacled. Like many important decisions in my life, this one’s long overdue and a case of push coming to shove. For many nights in the past couple of months I came home from work with my eyes barely open due to fatigue from staring at the computer screen for hours. Thinking enough is enough, my wife and I trooped to a nearby Acebedo shop one fine Saturday morning, and BOOM! I’ve been seeing the world clearer ever since.

The test showed I’ve a 50-75 vision, meaning I’m near-sighted. No surprise there. Like sinusitis and an unwavering love for the written word, this runs in our family. I remember my late paternal grandmother. She used to read with the page two to three inches away from her face. She refused to wear glasses because she said her tiny Filipina nose couldn’t support them. Fortunately, I don’t have the same problem. Thanks to my paternal grandfather, an American WWII medic whom I never met, an eyeglass-friendly nose also runs in our family. Life is fair that way.

My mouth tastes of blood…

Thou shall not booze, thy dentist say

Half a day has gone by since I underwent a particularly difficult tooth extraction procedure (it took the dentist almost an hour to pull the damn fucker out) and yet I’m still spitting thick globs of blood. I’ve no idea if this is normal or not, but I’m glad I’m feeling little to no pain (thanks, Mefenamic Acid), and hopeful that the bleeding will be gone in the morning. For the meantime, a steady diet of antibiotics and painkillers for the next three days is in order.

‘Sam Pinto’

Anyway, other highlights of my vacation, which is sadly about to end in less than 48 hours:

• Finished reading “A Game of Thrones.” Still thinking on whether to proceed to “A Clash of Kings,” the second in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, or pick something else instead, a Kerouac or perhaps a Murakami, as some sort of a breaker;
• Started watching How I Met Your Mother (love it!). Also, two movies: It’s Kind of a Funny Story and Hall Pass. Enjoyed both;
• Hooked up with a college friend and drank Tanduay Ice in a sari-sari store while shooting the shit and admiring the gentle rain falling that time. Totally bromantic, dude;
• Replaced my two-year-old Nokia with a Samsung Champ, which I named Samsung “Sam” Pinto. It was supposed to be the Galaxy Y model, but some greedy capitalist bastard decided to jack up its price from Php5,700 last December to Php6,500 as of last Tuesday. I am still fuming like hell;
• Visited a sick aunt in San Juan with my mother, who can no longer travel long distance without a companion. The two hadn’t seen each other in more than a year, and I’m glad I made their reunion possible;
• Countless quality hours with Raven and Charmaine

… and some small things that, in one way or another, had contributed in making the past 10 days a meaningful stretch. On Sunday it’s back to the salt mines again for me, and with that the end of all things bright and beautiful.

What?

Good news in quotation marks

There’s a movie currently showing in theaters about my lungs. It’s called Real Steel.

This piece of paper here — a little thing that would’ve cost me more than P700 if I didn’t use my MEDICard (God bless employment) — says both my lungs are “clear”* and my “cardiac silhouette is not enlarged in the present study,” and also my “diaphragm, costophrenic sulci and bony thorax are intact.” In a nutshell, it is telling my pulmonologist to “rule out pleural effusion.”

Which means I’m “as healthy as an ox” and “more than ready for the excesses of the Christmas season.”

Bring it on, “mates!”

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*From October last year to April this year, I was under medication for TB.

Absent again

Got soaked in the rain on my way home last night, and when I got home past midnight I was so tired and sleepy that I collapsed on bed with my soggy clothes on. (Kids, don’t try that at home, unless you have iron lungs or suicidal.) So this morning I woke up with hacking coughs and aching chest and the nasty feeling that everything in the world is fucked.

Anyway, will just stay in bed today and read and sleep and drink liquids and consume all the Vitamin C in the world. Also take some of those lagundi tablets for good measure. I was told they’re super effective but warned of their taste. How come anything that’s effective must taste like shit?