Today's post goes out to Isis and Denise who picked me up for dinner last night. I'm getting to be a regular Stammgast at the Glaswerk. Let's hope they let me come back after downing a couple of 7% Andechser Doppelbock Dunkels tomorrow night with Christel, Patrik, and Marc. At least my cellmate is happy every time I leave. I make sure I wait until the nurse brings my tray to the room, then I give it to him before I tell them I'm going out for dinner. You have to stick together in the joint. He told me he's going home on Saturday. I'm gonna miss the guy. I've been pretty lucky having him as a roommate compared to some of the squirrels in this place. When he arrived the day after me, he said his computer was full of movies and could pick up TV stations so he didn't need to pay the €3 a day for the remote control for the TV in our room. Even if we split it, he said, how would we decide what to watch. So, for the next week we just watched the one station we have, until he figured out how to change the channel without the remote. I won't miss his snoring.

The good doctor (who's name is pronounced the same as the German word for "crisis", by the way) missed his mark and put my daily shot of anesthetic too close to the nerve yesterday. My hips were swishier than a drunken runway model. This is the day he decides to take another photo of my spine. He swears the pictures he keeps taking are only being used to chart my progress and will not be published in the Deutsche Medical Journal of Freakish Abnormalities. You know, the one with pictures of Klaus Kinski and Karl Lagerfeld.

It's official, I'll be staying another week, although Dr.Crisis said if there's little improvement by the time I leave he has no idea what to suggest next. He still insists I don't need surgery, but he doesn't know why the shift is so severe while the bulge of the disc is so minor. Frau Schramm, who sees my deformity as a personal challenge and has really worked her ass off to fix it, says she's never seen so little progress in a patient in 20 years as a therapist. Stubborn muscles I guess.

I got a little too relaxed in the Stangerbad today and let my jaw dip below the waterline. All of a sudden my mouth filled with the metallic taste of aluminum foil, or a scallop that's gone off. There must have been a reaction between the electricity in the water and the fillings in my teeth. Seems like somebody should have warned me about that too. Finished the day with a four man group (physical)therapy session that included my roommate, Cheesy Mustache Comb Over Guy, and Navajo Jewelry, Chevy Van With American Flag Guy. Thank the gods those two have their own room.