So. I’m heading in early tomorrow to have my gallbladder removed. I’m still surprised on a few counts, but mostly because I thought it was my gallbladder back in February after we ruled out pulmonary embolism, cardiac arrest, heart disease, cracked ribs, lung disease(s) and started down the path of tests that would lead to the actual yanking.

I’ve told this story so many times to friends and family that I’ve forgotten who I haven’t told. I’m sounding a lot like an 80 year old man yammering on about my condo in Florida. I’m just shy of having a sciatica conversation.

In the consult, the surgeon mentioned that none of the tests confirmed the actual presence of gallstones, but my pain was “classic biliary pain”.

I still can’t believe that I’ve been dealing with this very vicious pain for almost 5 months.

This whole thing reminds me of a story from my time in San Francisco. One of my friends played with a lot of bands and one of the bands he was in featured an amazing multi-instrumentalist horns, sax, ukelele, kazoo, amongst dozens of other of obscure and amazing who played an instrument that was made from a dead animal. Dude would lean into the mic and say “Goat’s bladder” really low and then wail on the dead animal, producing sounds from whatever planet he came from. In researching this paragraph, I fell into a major rathole of videos and crazy solos. This same guy, Ralph Carney, plays with Yo La Tengo here:

So think of strange bladder-like sounds and I’ll talk to you all on the flip side.