I may have some medical stuff going on, but it's less than I feared, and the doctor isn't particularly alarmed by anything just yet. I have some imaging and lab tests coming up. The most terrifying issue—a hard peanut-sized lump on the palm of my left hand—is apparently most likely a something-or-other adhesion. Changes to my sciatica aren't noteworthy, and while I have (probably) correctly identified a misplaced suture tail, it is most likely 'encapsulated', and thus not a threat to health even if it's not super comfortable. At the risk of sounding optimistic, so far so good.

And just to prove that I'm not a pod-person doppelganger, I want to reinforce my dour aura by going off on a disconnected tangent and grousing that I'm reasonably certain 'viking metal' does not, in fact, mean bog standard 'brutal' metal with a reverb-heavy "O O O O O O D I N N N N N N" growled over it at random intervals. Like, dude, not even Sleipnir, Grendel, or Sigurd? Even Yggdrasil has its low-hanging fruit, man...