Michael and I began our grand 2002 Summer tour of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado with a visit to my eastern dance Guru Mimi Janislawski but smack dab in middle of our glorious visit at her palatial abode with a splendiferous view of the Golden Gate bridge et al, a strange lump appeared in Michael's palm which we all agreed demanded some looking into....
Luckily, my step-sister Rebecca, whom we had planned to meet for lunch that day, mentioned she knew hand specialist Dr. Kyle Bickel and without an appointment (bless his heart!) he saw us and diagnosed the problem (caused by a 'trauma' to the hand no doubt from baseball). He said we were looking at either a fibroma (built up scar tissue) or a pseudo-aneurysm.
Since there was a chance it might be the pseudo-aneurysm and since he had an opening in his surgery schedule we opted to follow his advise to open it up and see what he found. Low and behold it was the pseudo-aneurysm and it was a *dern* good thing we were the hands of a very skilled specialist because it met clamping the artery on either side in order to remove this little ditty and then skillfully/microscopically repairing the vessel. Happily, he did a fab job and the sound of the blood flow through that vessel the next day was like "brand new."
Obviously, once we were on our way to the drumming retreat Michael was kicking up his heals that the surgery was behind him. Of course, he was none too happy to be a one handed drummer at camp. But as you will on the next set of photos, nonetheless he managed to have a very good time (as did yours truly!)
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More photos from our summer travels: Click here
