We spent quite a bit of the day dealing with medical providers. Both Diane and I needed to get some images to bring to doctors who aren’t in the Stanford network – she’d found the right form on Stanford’s website, but it wasn’t clear where we’d have to go to pick up the images. Calling the phone number on the form and trying the obvious menu choice (“Medical Records”) was a dead end, but I kept going and found a way to leave a message. A few minutes later, the image librarian at San Jose called and said we could drive over and pick up a disk with Diane’s images.

I’m still waiting to get my images – it turns out that they aren’t kept in Stanford’s central records, but I’ve been trading phone messages with the ENT’s nurse, and I should have them tomorrow.

My allergist also wanted me to get a blood test and some chest X-rays, and I was able to do that late in the afternoon, going to both places just before they closed for the day. So I’m all set on that front.

This evening, we gave Quinoa and Kale Tabbouleh a second chance. We’d made it back in July and weren’t thrilled, but we had kale to use up and this seemed like a good option. This time, I added a little more pepper and we put some mandarin orange slices on at the end – that made the dish more colorful and definitely tastier.

We also tried a new-to-us cocktail recipe from the New York Times, a Watermelon Margarita, using Trader Joe’s Watermelon Juice instead of doing the work ourselves. It was quite tasty and not too alcoholic – it’ll be better on a hotter day, though!

The last time I visited the ENT, he recommended endoscopic sinus and turbinate reduction surgery to try to improve my sense of smell – he described it as “putting a Roto-Rooter up your nose”. That seemed drastic.

Since he’d also talked about allergies as being a probable cause of the sinusitis and nasal polyps he saw, I asked for a referral to an allergist before making a decision on surgery, and I visited him today.

I probably could have chosen a better day – the practice had just started using a new system for electronic medical records yesterday, and EVERY person I interacted with greeted me with “sorry, it’s our second day on the new system.” But we persevered and the session was worth the effort. It turns out that I am VERY allergic to dust mites and feathers (the doctor described it as “off the charts”), so we will be taking steps to reduce my exposure to them at home. They gave me a brochure about dust mites with lots of useful information on what steps to take – I was not surprised to find that it also had ads for allergen-proof pillow cases and the like!

The doctor wants me to get some bloodwork and imaging done before suggesting any other treatment. My next appointment is a couple of weeks away – by that time, I hope they’ve figured out how to use their new system!

Of course, Diane and I also took a couple of walks today – on the walk this morning, we saw a hummingbird enjoying some lantana.

If I’d had the big camera, I would have been able to zoom in more…but I might well have missed the hummingbird completely. Life is a series of compromises!