Day: March 3, 2009

I know, you’ve been waiting with bated breath to hear how my doctor’s appointment went on Monday, January 26th!  It turned out to be a pretty great day overall!

First, my friend Kathy, who used to live in the Chadds Ford area, offered to meet me for lunch.  I was so nervous, as you know, that I thought meeting Kathy would be a great way to ease myself into the appointment.  We had such a nice lunch!  She brought all kinds of wonderful gifts with her – adorable knit hats for the girls and lovely Connemara marble rosaries for me!!!  I so completely enjoyed the lunch and spending time with Kathy, that it came as a shock that my appointment was only 20 minutes away by the time we finished eating and talking!

The ride from the restaurant to the doctor’s office was literally only about 3 minutes.  As soon as I pulled into the parking lot, I got nervous again.  The girl at the front desk was friendly enough, and I was the only one in the waiting area.  The doctor was in with a patient when I arrived, but as soon as he finished, he came out and introduced himself, and gave me the paper work to fill out.  I have never been to an office – or worked in one – where the doctor was so hands on. 

After the paper work was completed, I went back into the office to talk to the doctor.  He is warm and friendly, and any nerves quickly disappeared.  It was a nice conversation, and I feel like I learned quite a bit about the things I was interested in.  My main areas of concern are the boobs and the belly – both things that have gone quite south as a result of my age, my weight loss, and my children.  Dr. Veitia went over some of the things that could be done to fix them, and then I was reminded that I still needed to go into the other office, strip nekkid, and be poked and prodded to see what I really could have done.

It turns out, I am not in as bad a shape as I think I am in.  And the things that are wrong with me are fixable.  Dr. Veitia is as nice and considerate as he could possibly be, and we go over what he can and will do, and what he doesn’t want to touch because I don’t need it.  He’s going to submit bills to my insurance company to see what we can get covered, and then we’ll take it from there.

Keep your fingers crossed – I’m anxious to hear back from the insurance carrier.  I’d like to get the stuff done and it doesn’t sound like it will be as bad as I thought.

You may or may not know that Starbucks for me is like a religious experience.  I get up every morning, make breakfast, pack lunches, drop at least one kid off at school, then go to worship at the local Starbucks, where my personal savior is a Venti seven pump skinny vanilla latte.  And I don’t even have to raise my voice to order – I pull up to the drive through, and the baristas just tell me to pull around.  It’s a beautiful thing.

So today, we go to a Starbucks that is out of the way for us.  We were out buying the essentials to make emergency French toast (isn’t that what you do in the face of a pending blizzard?  You go out, buy milk, bread, and eggs – what can you do with that, except make French toast?), and we stopped at a Starbucks we don’t usually go to.  We hadn’t stopped to grab breakfast at home, and when we inquired as to what types of scones they had, they highly recommended the maple sausage scone.

I should have known when they compared it to a “McGriddle” that the scone was not a good idea.  And the mere fact that Starbucks wants to compare itself to McDonald’s in any way is a sad shame, frankly.  But let’s not go there.

The scone is handed to us in one of the heavier bags, as opposed to the plain brown bag that the good scones come in.  Oh, I’m sorry, did I just say that?  I gave away the whole review!  But when they handed us the bag, it’s light and flat, almost like there isn’t anything in it.  Well, there isn’t anything good in it, so it’s probably best that the thing is so small!

As a gastric bypass patient, I shouldn’t be eating these things anyway.  But once it’s in your mouth, you know you have to do the obligatory chew it until it dissolves thing so it doesn’t get stuck and cause you tremendous discomfort.  So I’m chewing and chewing and chewing, and I realize it’s not dissolving like food does, it’s turning into a paste the consistency of the stuff they use to spackle drywall.  It’s gummy and pasty and gluey, and I don’t know if I should just swallow it and be done with it, or if I should spit it out and try to forget the awful feeling that I am sure will linger.  I swallow.  Ewwww.

There is definitely a taste and a smell of maple syrup in these things.  And I will say that I am not a huge maple syrup fan, so I’m not the best person on the planet to be reviewing these things.  But even getting past the maple syrup factor, there is some chewy bits of meat in these things that is meant to be sausage.  And I do like sausage, but in a less rubbery form.

Pouch worthy?  Not for me.  I’d much rather risk dumping a cinnamon chip scone than fight the consistency issues I have with these things.  The texture is bizarre, the flavors don’t come together like sausage and maple syrup should, and there are much tastier things on the Starbucks menu to dump on.