Medical Drama
No more Flagyl-ation for me. I still have giardia (I assume; one of the symptoms of Flagyl pills is nausea), but the pills are having the following side effects:
1. Bad taste in my mouth anytime I’m not eating (in a not-very-shocking twist, I’ve gained over 1.5 kilos since I began taking them). Apparently this is because of the overgrowth of Candida (a kind of yeast).
2. Minor pains, headaches, etc.
3. Skin sensitivity, which this morning became officially a rash – much like the rash I get from penicillin, which I’m allergic to. I thought this’d be the winner in getting me off the meds, but no; this is:
4. Very mild tingling in left leg one night.
#4 Apparently means my head will fall off (that IS what peripheral neuropathy MEANS, right?) Well ok, I think “peripheral neuropathy” actually means “mild tingling in leg at night”, but it’s something you’re meant to tell your doctor, STAT! so, since my doctor is shut for two days, I’ll just stop taking it until then.
Since nausea is a symptom of both the disease and the cure, I may be better by then.
Normally I would never stop taking antibiotics partway through a course (although, to be fair, it was initially meant to only take a week).
Smorgasblog
2am. Can’t sleep. Random blogliness ensues.
There’s much gratuitous cuteness today at http://twittertales.wordpress.com
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A couple of nights ago, my cat was sitting on my husband’s chest, purring loudly as my husband snored. I slid out of bed and crept around to the other side to get his iphone to record them both. My attempt was foiled when my partner woke up and helpfully passed me his flashlight.
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I have to take another 21 anti-parasite pills. It’s at the point now where I’m pretty sure the pills are worse than what’s left of my giardia. They leave a permanent bad taste in my mouth (sore throat, too) as if I’ve just thrown up. It vanishes for about five minutes after I eat, then reappears.
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My husband and efficiency don’t get along, so I’m attempting to write a sort of will – more a set of instructions for if I suddenly die (stuff like the phone numbers of all my students so someone actually tells them why I don’t show up). If he dies, it’s a lot simpler for me, because I AM efficient. All I need to do is:
1. Get his insurance money to pay for the funeral. Register for the dole to pay for rent and food.
2. Throw stuff away (mostly his) and move somewhere smaller.
3. Take happy pills and/or avoid human contact.
I wish I knew the statistics for how often spouses drop dead/are killed in the first, say, ten years of marriage. Pretty sure rational data would help dissipate my conviction that SOMETHING bad has to be about to happen. My marriage really is the easiest thing about my life.
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Avocados: so delicious, but so risky. Does buying a rock-hard avocado EVER result in an edible avocado? I think not.
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World’s most terrifying slogan (for Kresta blinds):
Windows come ALIVE!
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Wish I could sleep. This is silly.
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Mental illness is a lot like PMS, plus having a vital assignment due at 5pm, and also being naked.
It’s all about incoherant rage, a sense of doom (and guilt), and humiliation.
It’s also a lot like being a teenager (is there any experience more horrifying?) or being old (when suddenly you can’t do things you used to be able to do).
Still can’t quite convince myself I’m not making the whole thing up. What kind of s*** would that make me, after all these years?
It’s just so. . . stupid. I should be able to walk it off.
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On Monday I made oat cookies with brown sugar, butter, flour, oats, cinnamon and vanilla. The raw mixture was infinitely better than the biscuits. Why is that always the case?
Luckily I mostly just ate the mixture.
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Yesterday I had a D and M with a student about boys. She’s stunningly gorgeous, but doesn’t want to get into a relationship until she’s well into a degree. That was cool. Especially finding out people actually still say, “D and M”. Wow.
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I wish I was friends with Queen Elizabeth, so she could tell me how to sell my writing. I think she might be the greatest self-promoter ever.
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Pretty sure that if I just go into cryogenic suspension, one of my books will be published.
But not completely sure. Got to keep writing more better-er while I wait.
That I am a Barometer
I think the high rate of Westerners falling mentally ill is indicative of deep problems with our society. It’s partly that we have too much stuff. Even without knowing other people are starving, that’s not good for us (people need a certain amount of struggling toward a goal to be happy). We also do too much – constantly driven to get MORE stuff, so we have as much stuff as everyone else.
Bring back the eight-hour day.
Don’t work all weekend (and be aware of what “work” is, eg for me going to church is work so I have a rest day on Saturday, not Sunday).
Give away more money.
And then the world will be full of hugs and puppies.
Or not.
Yet another up side to mental illness
I have found marriage FAR easier than I expected. To be honest, however, not a day goes past that I don’t want to slap my husband at least once. It’s all a matter of perspective (and he IS astonishingly good-natured, which certainly helps).
I think some mental illnesses make fabulous preparation for marriage. For instance, since everything in the entire world annoys and fills me with rage, I am quite good at sharing a house and room with a deeply peculiar individual (who reads this blog, and will be taking that as a compliment right now – as he should). He annoys me no more than my own existence, so that’s handy. Probably the toughest part of marriage is living together harmoniously – but since I’ve survived my own mentally ill company, I can now handle anything. (Particularly if it doesn’t involve leaving the house or getting dressed, which are still a bit difficult – conveniently, my husband quite likes it when I’m at home and naked.)
Mental illness also means you’ve already lost a great deal of what is most precious to you – your independence, your intelligence, etc – so whatever your spouse asks of you is relatively little, even if they want you to eat your own faeces – and, to be clear, this is not a request my partner has made. (NB: if your spouse actually wants you to eat poo, they probably have some issues of their own.)
Mental illness is also excellent training for being a parent of a teenager. Even teenagers can’t be more insulting or more consistently demeaning than the voices in your head.
Therefore, mental illness is excellent preparation for marriage.
On this basis, the best possible preparation for marriage is probably a year or so of imprisonment and torture. I’ll be recommending that to future generations then.
Yay for Parasites
I’ve always thought parasites were pretty cool. The symptoms aren’t so bad – it’s a lot like having my time of the month for two months. (This is why girls are more stoic than boys, despite being more sensitive to pain.)
Today I found out one of my best friends also has parasites. Well, parasite. Just the one – but it’s bigger than mine. Which is only fair, since she’s apparently been infected with it for twelve weeks. She even showed me a picture – and she and her husband are talking about names for it. She plans to have it extracted in early September, so that’ll be fun too.
Yay for Emma and Matt! I’m so happy for you both!
Wait a sec. . .
Why am I going without chocolate when there really is absolutely no point? I thought being sick would just make things more difficult, not less useful. It’s a vital distinction.
I’m going to go and get some. Right now.
Today’s recipe: Caramello Malteser Jelly Bean Feast.
Ingredients: Lots of sweet sweet candy.
Method: Combine and eat.
It’s sad, to have lost another month of being in the healthy weight range. But clearly it’s out of my control. So at least I ge to enjoy life for a bit longer (ya know, except for the constant nausea).
Erg
I wasn’t gonna weigh myself today, but since I slept in a huge amount, I knew I had a good chance of seeing a nice number.
Nope. 78.3 again. It’s pretty clear now that something is not working in my body as it usually does. I’m still gonna eat no chocolate or lollies until Monday, but this really is pointless misery. (Unless treating my presumed giardia makes me suddenly lose a bunch at once. Unlikely.)
There are two good things about dieting:
1. Losing weight.
2. REALLY enjoying food.
Neither of these is happening. Food – all food – makes me feel sick. But Monday is only a few days away, and I’m on tablets that should fix my gut in 1-2 weeks. So I remain homicidal, but optimistic.
On the up side, I wrote a really excellent blog entry over at http://twittertales.wordpress.com about giardia AND it’s got pictures. Enjoy!
Panic Ye Not
A few people have panicked over my “bad news”.
No, I don’t have alien growths in my intestines. It’s just that my sister (who moved to another city two years ago) prefers the place she’s now living to coming back home to Canberra (despite the nearly-but-apparently-not-quite-infinite appeal of being near yours truly). She’s my best friend and there was (until now) a strong possibility of her coming back here to live. But why would I even want her to come here when she’s more at home over there?
In the next five years both she and I plan to have children, and I thought our children would be raised together – as close as siblings but without usual decade or so of rivalry, violence, and hate. Then hopefully when we as parents were irrelevant old fuddy duddies, the kids would help each other to be smart, good people. Now they’ll be pleasant aquaintances, but without huge amounts of shared experience (just shared genes, and SOME shared experience).
It’s scary to think of going through pregnancy and early motherhood without my sister nearby. But in five years I’ll have a different life, my children will have other bestest-friends-in-the-whole-world, and I will be grateful for however my life actually is. I am sad that my sister and I won’t have the same depth of shared experience that we would have had, but I’m glad she’s settled into her new home.
PS our internet is running perilously low, so don’t panic if I don’t blog for a few days (although I’ll most likely just cave in and buy more).
So You Think You Can Diet
I’m cautiously optimistic. The scales today said 78.3 kilos. It’s not great, but it’s not awful. They also read 77.6 at one point, but that seems a little implausible so either I accidentally cheated (more than the acceptable level of cheating, I mean), or there was a leak in the space-time continuum. Either way, I’ll weight a few days before weighing myself again.
My partner and I got bits of extra work which added up to about $150, which really takes the pressure off. We still can’t fix either of our cars (yet) but if I need to do something stupid we can go out to dinner.
Yesterday we went to a friend’s place for dinner and he made salad – usually a favourite of mine (I’ve even blogged about it). But there was chicken (my newest, shiniest food-related phobia). And vegetables. I was so hungry I was barely speaking (too difficult to be civil so catatonia was better) but I couldn’t face one bite. So I ate Maccers (which, since it isn’t technically “food” was both edible and a handy way to express my self-destructive urges).
Another friend who was there is obsessed with diseases – the more horrible, the better. He thinks I have living parasites in my gut (based on the fact I got food poisoning in Indonesia in January and haven’t 100% recovered). So I’m going to the doctor today.
Why couldn’t I get the awesomely cool kind of parasite that causes massive weight loss, dagnammit?
Fruit Fear
I have fruit fear.
Fruit is a dangerous food. It might look good and smell good, then be incredibly sour. One grape might be heavenly, and the next rotten. This fear haunts me daily, as I attempt to eat a correct dietary amount. When I can’t handle fruit at all, I drink juice (dried fruit also tends to help, or any fruit that’s prepared by someone else).
Recently I’ve developed a fear of chicken (yes, hilarious, I know). I attempted to deal with it today by buying a pre-cooked supermarket chicken to have on a sandwich with avocado. (Based on the idea that anything cooked by someone else is bound to be fine.)
Just thinking about my long-since eaten lunch now makes me feel sick. Our living room and kitchen are filled with the smell of roast chicken, and it’s FREAKING ME OUT. As soon as I finish this I’ll be fleeing to the bedroom until further notice.
My fruit fear is going well, so I guess I’ll freeze the remaining chicken and let it lurk in my freezer until a saner day. (And, of course, subtley add it to everything my husband eats: “Like a cuppa, sweatheart? It’s extra nutritous today. . .”)
I weighed myself this morning. It didn’t go well. Still optimistic about tomorrow, though.
Felicity Banks 