what with leg waxing, migraines have to do, or how to consolidate pain

So, a few weeks ago, Nayla asked me what I will do about my migraines if ever I am pregnant. Well, although I doubt I'm pregnant, there is going to be, at least until the big drugs and needles and pricy doctors are involved, that week before the most expensive five inch plastic stick to ever grace a drugstore shelf can tell me whether or not it's ok to take a Relpax. And because apparently I STILL haven't learned not to tempt fickle fate, I didn't plan ahead and therefore found myself with a minor migraine on Sunday night that by Tuesday night was a six flag ringer, complete with flashing lights and hours of vomiting and even a near constant right eye watering trick that has never happened before, but emerged with this migraine like one big unwelcome party trick. And I did not take my Relpax, surely the worst of the worst teratogonic drugs, right up there with thalidomide and DDT. (Just kidding. Actually Relpax is a pregnancy Class C drug, which means that nobody knows the effect on a developing fetus). But as anyone who has ever gone to Catholic School, much less sat through an embryology class knows, spinal cord and limb development happen in the precarious first few weeks, usually before the majority of the non fertility obsessed population becomes aware that they are pregnant.

Wednesday morning I broke down and called my neurologist. I was immediately transferred to "Jennifer," a nurse who is truly an angel. If I was the boss of the world, I would make every medical professional take lessons from her. I explained my situation and she offered to give me a blood HCG draw STAT. If that came back negative, I could take my Relpax with impunity. If it didn't, they would give me the regimen they usually prescribe to pregnant woman, which is Tylenol-3, Tylenol with codeine. Between two and four tablets, adjusted for height and weight. Safe during pregnancy? Perfectly, apparently. Actually I was going to wait out the results of the HCG test and then stick with the Relpax, but then I found out that the lab draw center, which sends samples out for analysis, considers STAT to be 4-5 hours. So I picked up the T3 prescription and drove to my office, where I sat through not one, not two, but four meetings. But that was perfectly fine. Because I work in a state building, the bar for general cognition is not set high.

And the verdict? A most effective pain killer. Next time, I'm going to multi task those pain killing properties and schedule a leg wax for the same day. If I can just get past my fear of phthalates in the wax.

Way #457 in which trying to get pregnant is going to be the death of me

I am typing this while periodically checking the tip of my left index finger, which won’t stop bleeding in the way that skin sliced by glass often does not. All because this morning I tried to take my temperature, a project that involves keeping in one’s mouth- not a digital thermometer, the type sensible people use because otherwise it really sucks to bite down on one of the glass ones, an unfortunately likely scenario if you:

a. are preoccupied, because the key to an accurate basal body temperature reading is taking your temperature before doing anything- getting up, talking, cognition, and so

b. might be therefore prone to forget that you also have small protruding orthodontic attachments, which then cause you to bite down and shatter the stupid thing in your mouth.

As far as a way to start the morning goes, I can’t recommend it. I was taking my temperature in the first place because this is my first month off birth control, which means that I am morally obligated not to consume my usual pharmacological pharmacopoeia in the second half of my cycle. A precaution no doubt pointless, but I don’t tempt fate. There’s this great line in the memoir by Christopher Buckley, referring to his sick father’s medication schedule, and says something to the effect of “enough to give Hunter S. Thompson pause.”

Although certainly not the type to elicit his post mortem envy, consisting as my intake does of:

-Claritin (the real stuff, with pseudoephadrine and not that silly phenylephrine (sp). Here “sp” refers to spelling, and not some sort of fancy time-release capsule. I need somebody to please explain to me how it would be cost effective for the methamphetamine makers to buy Claritin at nearly $16 a box, distill the pseudoephadrine down, and then sell the final product as street crack for what, five bucks? It doesn’t make sense. Even if methamphetamine dealers aren’t the savviest group. Honestly, fellow allergy sufferers, I could take this straight to Capital Hill.

-Wellbutrin SR, which I weaned myself off a month ago but is nevertheless a dearly missed friend, and last but not least

-Relpax. Relpax is the only thing, short of a medically induced coma and general anesthesia, that touches my migraines.

And therein lies the necessity of knowing exactly where things stand, ovulation wise.

My husband considers the ability to tolerate otherwise easily medicated medical conditions to be a barometer for personal character. I disagree. I don’t abuse drugs and because I have severe control issues that require me to be aware of everything all the time, I never have. But I have no problem taking them when indicated, which leads to weird juxtapositions like being perfectly happy to gulp down an entire endoscope, yet taking a Xanex or three for certain pelvic procedures. Which, in my mind, is perfectly acceptable. Certainly I suffer from vestigial psychic heebe geebes regarding these procedures, and that’s for me to work out with my therapist if I so chose, not to be gotten through with a brand new OB/GYN resident and the dreaded tomcat catheter.

But at the moment, I was more concerned about my mouthful of broken glass. Luckily, I knew exactly what I needed to evaluate the pieces of glass, but unluckily, we don’t have any of those black velvet covered jeweler’s flats lying around the house.

Several things happened at once. I opened the door, and the cat (who waits at the door, no doubt certain of the eventual inevitability of a day like today) darted into the bedroom, a place where her presence is strictly forbidden. The dog barked wildly in his crate, my husband slammed the door to his study, and I stubbed my toe on corner of the bathroom sink, causing me to speak one or two words that I normally do not.

In the end, after a careful forensic reconstruction of the thermometer (Germar, Mercury Free, printed on the back, the mercury free substance being in any case encapsulated in a separate container within the thermometer), it appeared that what was missing amounted to glass dust, probably lost in the bed or in the exclamations that followed after I stubbed my toe. I did confirm that the broken shards were glass and not, in fact, safety plastic, if there is such a thing. I figured this out by jabbing my index finger with one, an act that was, I have to admit, not too clever.

But in any case, I don’t really know of anyone who has actually died from eating glass. Come to think of it, the only instance of death by glass eating I am familiar with occurred in a V.C. Andrews book. Nayla, please take note. If I do die and you decide to capitalize on that with a ghost ridden Coordination and Fertility Impaired Flowers in the Audi, please take note: I am a fourth generation Daughter of the American Revolution and lots of bad karmic legacy stuff already happened to my family. Please, please don’t lock us in any attics.

more on this later

Star Trek and the Two Week Wait

As some of you already know, I am a big fan of Star Trek. It was through an episode of the original Star Trek series entitled Mirror, Mirror that I first learned of the concept of an alternate reality. In the alternate reality of that episode, Spock had a goatee, and Lt. Uhura was dressed in a very slutty ensemble, and torture and assassination were legitimate means of career advancement.

You may be wondering what this has to do with my current situation.

Well, today I had the blood draw that determines whether I am pregnant. I will not be posting the results of this test on this blog for a while. So, for you dear reader, there will exist two realities, the one where I am not pregnant and am very sad, and the one where I am pregnant, and am not sad, but worried about miscarrying, as happened last time.

A few days ago, my mother asked me whether I felt the same as the last time I was waiting to find out whether I was pregnant, and I had to remind her that the last time I was waiting to find out whether I was pregnant, my father got his terminal diagnosis. Maybe that is why I feel a little sad, a little angry, and a little tired, all at once. It has been a difficult nine months since that time.

So for now, I offer you the two realities. And if it amuses you to picture me pregnant, and in a slutty Star Trek uniform, so be it.

The Christmas Spirit Will Not Be Taking Calls This Afternoon

The Christmas Spirit Will Not Be Taking Calls This Afternoon

After a day of firing off emails to my sister (first empathetic and gentle, later accusatory and cheapshotish, a word that I really would like to see translated into German or some other sturdy case language), I received confirmation that the rumor I heard from my mother was true- “K” is not coming home for Christmas. I wasn’t surprised but I wasn’t happy, either. Christmas, in our family, has not been a particularly life affirming holiday for the past several years, and last year was downright miserable. But this year my mother has already volunteered to work at the hospital on Christmas day, and my husband and I just spent Thanksgiving in a restaurant, and I don’t care how nice the restaurant or how well executed the menu, there are only a few good reasons to eat out on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Personally, I think that trusting oneself around people not immediate family is one of them, but I do now get why at the Grateful Dead shows there was always an area cordoned off for the “sober” people. Sometimes it helps to be with people in the same situation. In my situation, that would mean a table full of seemingly normal individuals who at any given moment break out into tears and scratch their faces. Clearly it is too early in the morning for me to be writing this.

But my sister has a medium good reason for not flying from Chicago to California, and then back again, and that reason is that she is leaving on December 27th to go to Mexico City. For…vacation? I’ve been told that it’s tacky and disrespectful to joke about the illegal organ traffic of other cities and so I’m not going to do that anymore. This trip follows on the heels of her recent fall “bicycle tour” of Detroit and nascent interest in outsider art, and I have to wonder what might be next. Birdwatching in the DRC? I attribute some of this to the fact that our father was a bit overprotective, when it came to physical security, but I keep telling her that there has to be a happy medium, and because I am seven years older and she doesn’t have to listen to me, well, she doesn’t.

In other news, the annual state employee office nativity scene reenactment is under way.