Wednesday October 24, 2007 9:26 PM

So I'm back from Minnesota. I have such luck on airplanes. On the way over for trip number one I sat next to Old Man Fart's-a-Lot, and I mean lethal. It smelled like the guy had a colostomy bag. On the way back I sat next to Garlic Lady. Then on the way over for trip number two I was next to Very Large Woman which forced me to squish over to the left side of my seat, and on the way back I had Old Lady Who Doesn't Understand You Can't Sit With Your Elbows Sticking Out In Coach. Yes lady- those were my ribs. But it's all over now and here I am back in New Jersey.

Jim has an appointment with Beth on Thursday for an evaluation. Next Monday he's got to go back to Thomas Jefferson in Philly to see Dr. Sobel (the one who was as useful as eyeglasses on a blind man) so he'll give him a letter clearing him for his tooth surgery on November 5th. Dr. Decidua's office is all panicked and won't do his surgery without a letter. Give me a break. Speigel did the throat stretching surgery without a letter, but whatever.

I finally stayed off antibiotics three weeks in a row and was able to have my bacterial breath test with Dr. Rivera yesterday. I'm not surprised at the results. I flunked miserably. They bring you in and you breathe into a bag for a baseline, then they give you this syrupy stuff to drink, and you come back in a hour and breathe into a bag again. They're measuring Carbon Dioxide, Methane, and Hydrogen in your breath. If the numbers are too high you have too much bacteria in your gut. I flunked before I even drank the drink. Then I flunked miserably after the drink. And Dr. Rivera told me that smoking brings the numbers down, so they would have been even worse if I was a non-smoker. No- she didn't give me a license to smoke. This explains a lot of things. It certainly explains why Cipro, which is an anti-biotic, was the only drug that helped me for all these years. So I've backed into my diagnosis. But I've got to wait to hear back from Dr. Kozuch to see what I do next.