I thought by now that I would be sleeping like a baby. It sure seemed like I was tired as hell on the way back from Pittsburgh. And before reaching my door, we had to make two stops. One in Grove City’s Mall because the Gay Queen had to get some special dog biscuits for Ginger. I had never been there, didn’t have money to shop but a visit to a game store that had no type of game consoles but had every type of Monopoly themed games based on so many different things changed my mood. Some of the ones I remember was the Monopoly games based on characters from Family Guy, Narnia--Prince Caspian, and one based on cats called Catopoly. I should’ve asked how much they were, I wouldn’t mind collecting them. I’ll have to find out when the Gay Queen is going back out to spoil his dog some more. Me and the Hippie Queen, my roomie, were hating because they had nothing for cats. I wanted to scream out “Cats rule,Dogs drool!” but I contained myself.

The other stop was to WalMart. It was a last minute call but since I was in a car, what better time or so I thought. I guess you know, the Gay Queen gave me a tongue lashing for not mentioning it earlier while we were in places with better WalMarts than our own. He still took me to a local one I usually never go to. In fact, I believe the last time I was there was when I bought a computer back when I was working with my income tax check. That was about five years ago. Hell, all I wanted was some cat food for my kitties and a game controller for my laptop so I could pretend it was the Playstation 2 which I gave to my son. Now he’s in jail and someone is playing the damn Playstation, free of charge.

The trip started out good, conversation flowed for awhile with some occasional silences. But those didn’t last long, usually they got interrupted when someone noticed some cows, horses or the deer whose eyes got caught in someone’s headlights. Even with going the speed limit, I couldn’t get any decent pics. I thought I would have a better chance once we reached Pittsburgh but that didn’t happen. It didn’t happen because the directions I got mailed to me from UPMC sucked, we were going in circles. And what was worse is that traffic in downtown Pittsburgh is very congested, it reminded me of playing the video game Frogger and we three Queens were the frogs. We did finally find UPMC, just not the part where I was suppose to be at so we asked a nurse that we spotted. The directions she gave us were right on point and we finally found the Kaufman building though I was already a half hour late. I was frustrated and pissed, not at the Gay Queen but at UPMC because those were the worst directions I ever received. I think next trip I will use Mapquest.

I was so frustrated that I just knew when I reached the office they were going to tell me that I would have to reschedule but the Gay Queen assured me they wouldn’t and they didn’t.They just had to locate the doctor. But even with that, I was just happy they were going to see me, he had to wait a half an hour til I got there. I had no problem waiting a few minutes for them to find him. It gave me time to put my attitude in check. While they were still searching for the specialist, a nurse called me back and did the usual. I had a fever of a hundred, not sure from what but I felt fine. By the time she was done, the specialist had appeared.

He introduced himself and presented his hand which I shook. We sat down and he started to look over paperwork then the computer. After a few minutes he asked me a surprising question, one that kind of caught me off guard. He asked, “Why are you here?” I looked at him, paused for a moment because I felt the attitude coming back and thought of a decent answer to give him. Instead it came out as question to his question. I replied,“ I was hoping you could tell me? The local specialist ordered a MRI, got the results and the next thing I knew, I was told to come see you, so you tell me?”. I noticed my response caused him to pause as well, who knew pauses in conversation could be so infectious.

After the pause, he explained the reason for his question. According to the scan and MRI, I indeed have scarring on my liver but he didn’t understand the local specialist’s reasoning for referring me to him. The scarring was not very large and just from looking at the results, he knew I did not have cancer. He concluded that the scarring was probably from the meds I am on, all of them, not just the hiv meds which I just knew was the only cause. And he didn’t understand why neither the local specialist or my ID doctor did not explain this to me. He even apologized for me having to come all the way there when the local specialist could have saved me the trouble. He said he would see me again in two months and ordered some more blood test to be done. If anything abnormal should come from them then he would consider doing a biopsy. Consultation over and I was out of there in under an hour. Now breathe and exhale...What a relief. Well, two out of three isn’t bad, I may not of gotten any good pics or even a good story (depends on who is reading if they think it is good or not) but I did get good news.