10/23/08

290) Parallel Universes

October 21, 2008
Tuesday


El Milagro: I'm here and Rich the Gabby Tech is yakking away as he is sticking me and I look over just as he sticks the first trocar in wrong. I like mine 'one up one down' and without asking or even thinking (it seems), he is shoving the first needle up which can only end up with my setting being 'up up'. I scold him; "Please... when you are sticking me... slow down and concentrate on what you are doing. Ask me how I want the needles set. I don't like it when you are not paying attention to what you are doing." I am angry and he is less than apologetic and says in a seemingly narcissistic way, something like "...okay okay... SORRY". I'm hot about it and spend the next 20 minutes listening intently to NPR to calm myself down.

Later he comes back and has to completely rehook my machine, blaming the machine, and I am not completely sure what he is up to... but I hope that Rosie the Tech comes by to check his work. Meanwhile, while he is doing that tube work, Dr. Venkatesh is visiting with me, reporting on how good all my labs are (except, of course, my phosphorous... which is creeping up again) and I bring up to her about how the meds I take for the RLS seem to be discontinuing to work as well: my RLS is starting to bother me earlier in the day and when I take the meds they wear off in the middle of the night, waking me up with the leg jitters and jumpy toes. We spend some time trying to figure out what the new meds are Moritz put me on. Neither the center or the doc's office has the correct med listed (Ropinrole HCL) so I have to promise to bring the name next time. Venkatesh still is a god-send doc here in this place and I actually like her brief visits... her bedside manner is smiley and she really seems to know her stuff.

She moves on, Rich finishes his re-do on my tubes, and Ann the Nurse comes by to check me and my machine. I settle in.

At 7 I tune in to NOVA and find one of the best NOVA's I have seen in years: A documentary about the metaphorical search for his father by the lead singer of the EELS**. This fantastic show is about father/son dynamics, the structure of the universe, indie rock and roll, travels to the inner sanctum of the physics dept. at Princeton U., and the conversations between old physicists and young (ish) musicians. WOW. What could be better?

And, who among us remembers the 60's and the flash-in-the-pan realty-bending of Hugh Everett's work, now referred to as the "many worlds" theory... but then, in the dawning of the age of Aquarius we hallucinated it as PARALLEL UNIVERSES... my own physics professor (a leading Christian Astronomer who argued that there were only 2 to 3 inches of dust on the moon, based on creation theory) called Everett a 'freak' and us freaks in the audience popped up, saying, "Alright!!" and rushing out after class to experience our own parallel universes. Those early lectures and wonders led me to lots of other thought provoking and exciting reading experiences with the varied works of Immanuel Velikovsky
, Joseph Chilton Pierce, Itzak Bentov, and Gary Zukov. Ah yes! Those were the days!

So, I happily absorb this week's NOVA show and go home happy and feeling fulfilled just from the memories that show brought back. So it goes.

NOTES: In at 77 kgs. and out at 75 kgs.
*The Theory Today, retreived online October 2008 from NOVA, at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/manyworlds/byrne.html
**The EELS, online at http://www.eelstheband.com/

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