Not To Be Trusted With Knives

I wrote this last night, but it appears that my computer messed up and didn’t post it.  So I’m posting it now.

I Am A Cyborg, Just Like My Car or IUD, Yeah You Know Me.

So, fair warning: if you aren’t interested in reading about my uterus, you may as well stop reading right now.

Now that no one is reading, I can say that today I had my IUD replaced.  And it hurts like a sunovabith. (Another fair warning: there will be swears).

I first got an IUD five years ago and I distinctly remember it being by far the most excruciatingly painful experience of my life.  In fact, at the time I thought that perhaps the way the IUD prevents pregnancy is by being so painful to insert that you think, “Holy holy holy shit. And that’s just a teeny tiny little thing. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to have a freaking human being go through my cervix! That’s it – I’m becoming a nun!”  I was told when I got that IUD that it has to be replaced every 5 years and, honestly, I’ve been dreading it ever since.  I made my appointment for today after work and it seemed like no sooner did I get to work, but it was the end of the day and time to go to my appointment!  Time flies when you are not wanting it to!

On the plus side, the doctor I went to this time did it much faster than the one who did it the first time¹ so although the pain was awful, at least it was over relatively quickly.  After the insertion, they tell you to wait around for 10 minutes to make sure that you don’t faint or anything. And in those 10 minutes, although they tell you that the pain should go away, it actually got worse, and I had to lie down and wait for another about 15 minutes or so before I felt OK enough to go. They gave me some Tylenol 3, which I distinctly remember making me totally loopy when I had them after I got my wisdom teeth out, but now they seem to take the edge off the pain, but aren’t giving me any sleepiness.  Which I could really use right about now!  I tried to nap and I think I dozed off for a few minutes here and there, but mostly it’s just shifting positions to try to alleviate the cramping pain.  I feel slightly nauseated (from the pain? from the meds?) and I just want to go to sleep – I’m really hoping it will dissipate over night!

Anyway, not really much point to this posting. Just venting.  Please excuse any typos – looking at this screen isn’t helping.  Going to try to sleep.

Update: a few minutes after finishing writing that, I threw up. Hard. And I hate throwing up. I hate it with the fire of a thousand suns.  Also, throwing up makes all the little blood vessels around my eyes burst, so I have all these little purple dots on my eyelids and around my eyes². I didn’t sleep well last night and although I felt better than yesterday, thank FSM, I still didn’t feel that great so I called in sick today so I can stay home and rest. Which seems to be helping. And now I think I’ll try to nap.

1. and this time they had to remove the old one and then insert the new one and it still seemed faster than the first time, when they only had to insert one [↩]
2. petechiae as it’s known to the medical nerds [↩]

I hate being sick. Hate, hate, hate.

I spent the entire day yesterday, and most of today, in bed.  My fever went as high as 39.3 degrees and, despite the fact that I was so very, very hot, I felt so very, very cold.  Any time I got out of bed (primarily to get a refill of tea), I had to put my touque on and even then I would be shivering and would have to get back to bed as quickly as possible, getting under my three blankets to try to not feel like I was freezing to death. My weirdest symptom, I think, was the my sense of taste has become very acute – salt tastes very, very salty and sweetness tastes super super sweet.

I was trying to figure out if I had a cold or a flu, but can’t quite figure it out. According to a table comparing cold and flu symptoms in Vancouver Coastal Health’s Pandemic Preparedness booklet, fever (usually between 38-40 degrees) are common with the flu, but rare with a cold; conversely, sore throat is common with a cold, but rare with the flu².  So, who knows.

Mercifully, my fever seems to have abated now.  I still have a wicked, wicked cough though.  I’ve graduated to sitting on my couch, without any blankets, watching my beloved Canucks streaming live on cbcsports.ca!

¹not that it really matters, as either way you just need to rest and drink lots of fluids
²Why is it that we say “a” cold, but “the” flu? They are both caused by many strains of virus, so shouldn’t we say “I have a flu”?

It seems that every time I go to Ontario, I come back with the plague.  On the day of the pig party, my sister was totally wiped out by a nasty, nasty cold.  Like, so sick that she went to bed immediately after everyone left (about 5:30 p.m.) and slept through ’til the next morning.

Now I appear to have come down with the same thing.  Sore throat¹, headache, runny nose, achy sinuses. My apologies to all the people on the bus yesterday when I had a sneezing fit.

So, since I’m not capable of writing anything coherent today, I give you this video: How Hockey Sticks Are Made:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-ueMOMW6mw&eurl]

I hadn’t realized how much of the process was done by hand.

¹though not as bas as the sore throat I had last month.

My throat hurts like a mofo.  I was fine yesterday, but I woke up feeling like someone had taken sandpaper to my throat.

I drank water. I drank tea. I drank more water.

I even choked down some dreaded Buckley’s Mixture.

I continued to drink water. I played a hockey game¹. And I sucked on throat lozenges.  And, as I type this, I’m drinking Shopper’s Drug Mart brand Neo Citran².

And yet my throat still hurts.

And so I shall not be writing about the next BC Primer like I should be on a Sunday³. I am going to bed!

Today’s excuse has been brought to you by “my throat hurts!!!”

¹Not that I expected this to help my throat, I’m just putting it out there.
²The name of this product is actually “Hot Lemon Relief.” Which makes me laugh for some reason.
³I know, you are totally shocked that I’m being derelict in blogging about Premier duties.

Image credit: Posted by Dana Robinson on Flickr under a Creative Commons license.  While searching for a CC licensed photo online, I saw this ad. And given the title of this blog posting, this was that much funnier.