If both of you could open your eyes at the same time, that’d be swell. Smile

Incongruous: lying sick at home with a cold while it reaches 102 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

I often think about the non-obvious technological leaps that have occurred in my lifetime. It is too easy to point and say “internet!” It is far more fun to think about little advances that only impact your life once in a while. These are the ones that you don’t get used to seeing. Every time you interact with this technology, you still go “wow!” Feel free to comment about an example you feel this way about.

One of my favorites is digital radiography. This sounds stupid from someone who habitually spends time unveiling detailed, three-dimensional images of the innards of a person’s skull. Yet every time I go to the dentist’s office and get a digital x-ray, I am stupefied. It just shows up, instantly! On that really old crappy Compaq computer! The hygienist and dentist huddle around it and judge the images, and by extension, me. Yeah right you’ve been flossing. The 21st century sees right through your lies.

I remember once in college I badly sprained my ankle playing basketball (‘ankle sprain’ must come up on my blog a lot). It happened during the summer, and I was wearing badly worn, ill-fitting shoes; lesson learned. I limped home and put ice on it, but I remember thinking it hurt worse than my usual sprain. Having never broken a bone, I asked my friend Vivek if it was possibly broken. I believe he said something along the lines of “you should go see a doctor.” Which is ironic, because now he’s a doctor. Ha, take that Vivek.

I went to the doctor and got x-rays on my ankle. This involved a cold glass table, blue leaden underwear, and big film plates that got slid in and out of the x-ray machine like car batteries. I waited around for it to develop, which was very rapidly although not digital-quick. Then someone who was not the radiologist came out and told me it was not broken. I should just RICE and heal. So I walked home. Then I walked to dinner and walked around town. I walked home again, and I walked around our apartment, aptly named 420 High.

Then I checked my phone. If you know me, you know I never charge my phone and and rarely check it–you’re lucky if I pick up. On the phone was a missed call and a voicemail. It was from the radiologist. Apparently, he said in a gravy voice, my ankle was fractured. I should not, under any condition, put any weight on the ankle. Whoops. He slurred out some recommendation and hung up. I scheduled another appointment, got crutches, and considered how much extra damage I had done. A few days of hobbling to lab and googling “what happens if you walk on a broken ankle” later, I went in for the follow-up, only to discover that my ankle was not broken after all.

A different doctor emerged from behind the receptionist’s counter with my file. The x-ray clung to the inside of the goofy, oversized folder. This doctor, looking annoyed, didn’t even bother switching on the lightboards. He just held up the x-ray of my foot and ankle against the ceiling lights. He stared at it. I had no anatomy at the time, so it just looked like a jumble of pebbly bones. He pointed at the spot on my talus where Voicemail Radiologist had thought my torn ligament had ripped off a wedge of bone. Vengeful Ligament. The office was closing for the day, and above the maze of canary-colored folders, half of the lights went off. The doctor looked at me. “See,” he said, “that’s just a smudge.” He circled some speck with his red pencil, shrugged, and sent me home.