Yesterday I scratched my bellybutton – I mean really scratched it. I didn’t scratch particularly hard, but I got my fingernail good and deep…
I realized yesterday that blogs by nature are more like online diaries. I understand that, like everything, this is whatever I choose to make of it, and, for your benefit, I choose not to make it about my feelings. But after talking to my family about my blog, and reading other peoples’ blogs I see that, perhaps, I could make a bit more of an effort to share a little bit more of my personal life… perhaps I could even be poetical about it.
So let us consider this entry an experiment: I shall write about my day in an epistolary manner and, should you feel so inclined, you may comment upon my new genre.
Last night, as Shane and I were standing on the gravel field of Eastview, the elementary school near his house, goodbye-and-godspeeding Pat and Liana on their way north, I prodded my bellybutton with my left index finger. I inscribed three circles, gently but firmly, finger in navel, as is my won’t, until I felt that I had gone quite far enough. Upon that slight sting all digits immediately repaired to their native pockets and I thought no more of it.
However, just an hour later as I changed for bed my fingers chanced across the downy plains of my paunch and I noticed a moistness about the umbilicus. Closer inspection revealed that I was, in fact, secreting some sort of fluid therefrom. I wiped the mysterious substance away and thought no more of it.
This morning I suffered yet another spell of insomnia which ultimately ushered me to the beige couch of Shane’s den – prime seating for Ontario’s early news. During the second commercial break I was unfortunate enough to be experiencing, I once again came in contact with the clear, odourless, millilitre-or-so that had emerged from my belly button. This time I did pause to ponder, but, being dewey-eyed and dully-minded at the time, such meditation did not last long, and I quickly returned to the task of finding something that wouldn’t put me to sleep figuratively while I tried to sleep quite literally.
But tonight – a full 20 hours after the initial incident – I am still leaking! I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is that I have done to myself, nor why it is not rectified. There is no ostensible issue, just the one, strange symptom of a chronically dripping bellybutton.
You know who might know something about what that is? A doctor.
Seriously, how else are you going to find that out? And more importantly, how am I going to find out?
Web MD was totally useless. Asking parents returned the answer of, “My kid had that. A doctor prescribed an ointment.”
My leaking tummybutton, however, totally cleared up on its own.
But…no one knows what it is?
Your mother did exactly that on more than a million occasions during her teens and 20’s. She had an itch and would look dead ahead staring in abstract blis into whatever it was that drove her to self destruction of the upper epidermus. For the life of me I cannot remember what the secretion is or was for there was no scabbing involved!
You also did that to me on one occasion baring your soul to me on a fine summer day on the deck. You started scratching my leg absent mindedly while talking in runon sentances. About 5 minutes later the wound started to weep. Of course I let you continue because I love your runon sentances.
After a bit of searching on Wikipedia I found this:
Blood plasma is the liquid component of blood, in which the blood cells are suspended. It makes up about 55% of total blood volume. It is comprised of mostly water (90% by volume), and contains dissolved proteins, glucose, mineral ions, hormones, carbon dioxide (plasma being the main medium for excretory product transportation), as well as the actual blood cells. Blood plasma is prepared simply by spinning a tube of fresh blood in a centrifuge until the blood cells fall to the bottom of the tube. The blood plasma is then poured or drawn off. Blood serum is blood plasma without fibrinogen or the other clotting factors.[1]
Plasmapheresis is a type of medical therapy involving separation of plasma from red blood cells.
I think that solves your question! Plasm was the word that eluded me.
But why would plasma be leaking out of my bellybutton?
It stopped all by its lonesome, by the way.