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	Wednesday, July 02, 2003

So what better way to recover from a ten vial blood draining experience than a great dinner and great wine at the Marx Brothers with Eilene Hendershot - a former Slat Rat boss from way back and a very good friend. We had a super time - we talked and talked and talked. Eilene now lives Outside, but still comes back once a year for the July 4th holiday. It's a tradition of ours to meet at the Marx Brothers for some serious catching up and some serious wine. So, tonight's wine was a real treat. The Marx Brother's wine steward, whom I adore (he's my favorite sommelier in Anchorage), recommended an Austrian (that's right, Austrian, not Australian) white wine: Schloss Gobelsburg 2001 Gruner Veltliner Steinsetz. Wow. What a great wine. A very crisp, not heavy, not fruity, wine. And certainly not a Reisling, which one might expect since we're talking Austria. The wine had three major components: an initial really good steely metallic taste on the front of the tongue. Then a very mild sulfer (think pouilly fuisse) taste on the back of the tongue. And finally a very nice fruit finish. A super wine. Eilene and I slurped it right down! I don't want to wait for a whole 'nuther year for our next dinner... 10:04:50 PM    comment []

I visited a vampire today. I underwent a new round of bloodtests that required, ten, count 'em, ten vials of blood. Geez... I've been having issues lately, so my potential new GP (I think I like him, but I'm hedging my bets - I've been very dissapointed on the doc front several times in the past) ordered up a bunch of tests which included: The usual cast of characters including Sed Rate, THS (thyroid), hematocrit, etc. NK function. NK stands for Natural Killer cells. I'm not sure about this test. It's an immune function test. However, when I do a Google on it, all sorts of alternative medicine sites come up. Hmmm...Danger Will Robinson. Danger. Danger. ACTH Stimulation Test (a Cortisol/Arenal function test). This one was certainly the most entertaining. A baseline blood sample was taken at the lab. I then drove to my doctor's office where he injected me with ACTH in order to challenge my adrenal gland. I then drove back to the lab where after an hour, they took another blood draw (the tenth and final vial). What was interesting is that supposedly, I should have not experienced any noticeable side effects from the ACTH shot. But two minutes after the injection, I experienced the most bizarre three dimensional nerve like sensation in my abdominal area. I had never felt anything like it before and it took my breath away. I really have no adjectives that can describe it. It settled down pretty quickly. But the sensation didn't completely quit until about three hours after the injection. The test results should be back sometime next week. I have to say that after today's vampiric drain, I'm sure I'm even paler than normal. 9:38:47 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 Stephanie A. Kesler. Last update: 3/5/2005; 8:34:02 PM.