More about Tijuana

What if you wrote a blog that nobody read? You'd be - this blog. I imagine somewhere, someday, some advanced civilization stumbling across these words. They might consider the primitive state of the civilization, long gone, that would produce them. It would be evidence used to support a theory of civilizational decline. Thus I get my 15 minutes of fame. So, in the immortal words of Carl Spackler, "I got that going for me."

The first day at Dr Calzada's clinic in Tijuana went thus:

Get a blood test at the lab in the same building - $130 cash.

Go upstairs to the waiting room and wait for a while. I think it was at least an hour.

Met with Dr Calzada. He took a blood sample from Bob's finger, then put it under a microscope. We could see the magnified sample on a monitor.

Little side trip on Dr Calzada. Very nice man. Friendly, expressive, gracious. He exudes confidence without seeming arrogant.

OK, back to the blood test. Rather than a bunch of individually spaced blood cells, Bob's were clumped together. Dr Calzada said clumping indicated poor blood oxygenation. There weren't very many individual blood cells like you usually see in pictures.

Smaller black fuzzy looking things, lots of them, indicated yeast. Dr Calzada asked Bob to stick out his tongue. It was white. My lovely and gracious wife has maintained for years that Bob probably suffered from a yeast infection. She's usually right.

Larger irregularly shaped bodies on the slide were plaque. Several of the plaques, if that's a word, contained white spots. Dr Calzada stated they were uric acid crystals. They were more regularly shaped than the plaques, so the crystalline designation seemed plausible.

The blood tests weren't back, but Dr Calzada said his review of the blood sample suggested improper liver function. The lab tests weren't back, so he wasn't prepared to make a real diagnosis.

From there he went to the chelation room. More about that next time.

Last thought. I was tying some Mahagony Duns with goose biot bodies. I like biots because they make a nice thin body, are a little shiny, and the wrapped biot suggests segmentation. The only problem I've had is that trout can chew them up pretty good. So I've started appying a thin film of super glue to the biot body. It makes it even shinier and a lot tougher.