rubber ducky, you're the one...

dr pruitt called yesterday evening. her message said that my white cell count from my spinal tap shows evidence of inflammation. she said there were 23 white blood cells in the spinal fluid, where normally there should only be 4 or 5. i don't know what this means. she called me again (i think by accident) this morning, and i asked her if she wanted me on the steroids to diminish that inflammation (which seems like a good idea to me), but she wants to wait until she gets the final spinal tap results--the one that will indicate the presence of protein bands (evidence of demyelination).

she said she's going to call in the avonex prescription today and i should be able to get started on it next week. good. the sooner the better.

when i was in the hospital, two of my friends from work visited me with a basket full of stuff, including a pez dispenser with an ernie head (as in bert and ernie). cosby (my dog) got hold of the basket at home and chewed up the pez dispenser, but managed to leave the ernie head intact. so now the ernie head resides on top of my computer at work, on top of a little plastic dinosaur.

so, yesterday i noticed this weird little yellow thing sticking on ernie's mouth. upon investigation, i found it to be a tiny drawing of a duck on yellow paper. well aware that i don't work with a single soul who would do something so charming, i realized that stean was here on saturday doing some part-time work. so i called him up and asked him if he had given the ernie on my desk a rubber ducky. he said, "you just now noticed that?"

i feel like i've been delayed in noticing things about him a lot lately. i'm glad he's had the patience with me to wait for me to catch up. because, of him, i'm awfully fond.