Uuuuugh

- I had a big weekend as a chaser to a big couple of months
- I passed my physics course
- I'm now sick again

Uuuuugh.

When I grow up, I want to be just like...

There's an old cliché that all women eventually turn into their mothers. For those whose mothers are awesome, this may not be such a big deal and may even be something to aspire to. For those of us whose mothers are less than inspiring, it is something which we dread and want to avoid at all costs.


I do not want to become my mother. There are definitely some similarities between us (as is only natural, given that I spent the first 25 years of my life living with her and have half her DNA) and not all of them are ones I'd like. For instance, I'm bad-tempered and proud. These are the main two characteristics which make her unpleasant, and could potentially make me a lot more unpleasant than I already am. But I do have certain abilities which will keep me from ever becoming like her:


1) I'm aware of how bad-tempered I am. This means that, under most circumstances, I'm able to either prevent an outburst or I'm able to warn people that one is on its way. Of course, this system does fail occasionally, and this is where my other advantage comes in:


2) I'm able to let go of my pride and admit I was wrong. If I do have an outburst, I'm well aware that I'm behaving inappropriately. As soon as I'm calm enough to speak normally, I apologise for it and explain why it happened. I do this not to excuse the behaviour, but for two other very important reasons: 


1) To let the person know that I recognise that it came from me and isn't their fault
2) Because saying it out loud helps me to internalise what happened and why it happened, and helps me in the learning process of preventing it from happening again.


I guess all this can be summed up by me saying that I'm self-aware, and my mother isn't. Because of this, I will never become my mother.

Right.

I've spent the past month or so getting progressively more and more lethargic and tired and unable to do things like ride my bike both to and from work on a consistent basis. The bike needing to be fixed did have something to do with it, and yet I still couldn't make it both ways twice/week like I could at the start of term.

Then I remembered something: We haven't had iron supplements in this house in over a month. We'd run out, and it was on the list of things to get, and we kept forgetting to buy it.

I finally went and got some last night, so lets hope that I improve over the next week or so. Wish me luck!

Logic ahead!

Premise 1: I get really irritated by stupididty.
Premise 2: I like to write about things that irritate me
Premise 3: The common cold is unbelievably stupid and irritating.
Conclusion: I'm going to write about the common cold!

I've got my first one for the year, and it's stupid. Allow me to list off the things that irritate me the most:

Having a blocked nose: If you can't breathe througy your nose, you can't do a lot of things properly. You can't speak properly, sleep properly, you can't eat properly. It's pretty bad. I'd say it's the worst part of being sick. Thank goodness for pseudoephedrine and the fact that it's available again!

Body aches: Pretty bad, but at least you can breathe and eat. I tend to get these with fever. It sucks, but resonds well to paracetamol and ibuprofen.

Nasal drips: Eeeeeeergh. Not fun to be woken up by. I'm just glad I don't have a post-nasal drip; that would be worse, and it can cause the next one.

Cough: Thankfully, I don't have this yet.

I guess the main irritations are the ones that keep you performing normal bodily things, and the main ones that get affected when you have a cold are sleeping and eating. I guess that's why I hate being sick and what I hate about it: Difficulty performing the basics.

I'm just glad this is a mild one, because I can mostly breathe and do most things without too much trouble. I'm just hoping it'll be completely over by tomorrow morning so that I can cycle in to work :-)

Still more female TMI

I'm here to whinge to you all about thrush.

No, not this little guy that I found on the internet. Though he is a lot more pleasant to look at. The picture is from this site.

Thrush is a naturally-orruring yeast.  It is kept in check by naturally-occuring bacteria. When you take antibiotics, bacteria die. Thrush sees its opportunity and GOES INSANE.

Last year, I had to take four days off work because I had it so badly that I couldn't walk. Peeing was so painful that, on the second day of my confinement (I started having symptoms a few days before it became crippling), I nearly threw up and then nearly passed out.

Even a standard infection is itchy and burny and just generally unpleasant. WHY IS IT EVEN THERE?? I'll bet no one even knows what this damned yeast actually DOES. I'll bet that the only reason those bacteira exist is to keep the thrush in check. I can just see it*:

Bacterium 1: Why are we here, Syd?

Bacterium 2: Ah, the fundamental question of the universe! Why are we here? What is our purpose? How...

B1: No, no no! I mean, why are we here? In this dark, damp place?

B2: Oh! Well, to keep those guys over there in line!

B1: Well, why are they here?

B2: Well, I guess they're here so that we have something to do...

B1: So what you're saying is that they're only here because we're here, and we're only here because they're here. Would anyone even notice if we all just left??

B2: ...

*Inspiration for this dialogue was taken from Red vs Blue, because that show rocks.

Differing definitions

I used to do a martial art, and part of that was a strength and conditioning (S&C) class. This class was a lot of fun, but it was hard-core. If you hadn't been doing it for a while, the warm-up alone was enough to nearly kill you. The rest of the class was designed to work the muscles in your body until you could barely walk, and if you didn't take showers with alternating hot and cold water that night you would not be able to make it down a flight of stairs the next day (going downward is most definitely more painful than going upward!).

I also have SVT, which means that my heart will happily beat at over 200bpm, just because it feels like it.

As a result of a few years of doing S&C on a weekly basis and having a wacky heart condition, I see "light", "moderate" and "hard" exercise differently to how most people seem to. Allow me to define the standard terms in my own words:

Light exersise (moderate walking pace; moderate cycling pace on flat ground): You aren't actually doing any work. You can hold a conversation, so you may as well be sitting all the couch and channel-surfing for all the good it's doing you.

Moderate exercise: Ok, your heart rate's up a little. You've now graduated to walking from the couch to the fridge as far as actual benefit goes.

Hard exercise: Finally, you got off your lazy arse and did something. It's a start.

You see, when I was at the gym my idea of actually doing work on the treadmill was the treadmill's idea of "STOP NOW YOU'RE GOING TO GIVE YOURSELF A HEART ATTACK!!!". My idea of a "working" heart rate is 170bpm or more, when apparently for my age it should be at around 155bpm.

Also thanks to S&C, I don't see exercise-induced muscular pain as any real kind of problem. For me, sore muscles are really just part of every-day live. You complain a little, but ultimately you just get on with things.

This means that I'm probably fitter than I think I am, but also that I'm harder on myself than I probably should be! None the less, I think I'll get back on my bicycle.

Just quickly:

1) I now have a Twitter feed in my side bar! =D Might encourage me to tweet more often.

2) I hate endometriosis. It hurts. I couldn't walk yesterday from the pain.

3) I love my housemate for letting me use her computer, because mine's in the Apple hospital. She rocks!

4) I'm very glad I have a backlog of entries, so lack of computer is no problem.

5) My parents are totally weird.

Dairy-free. Ergh.

As well as a stupid reproductive system, I also happen to have a really stupid gut. It hates me. A lot. This is a relatively common exchange:

Tummy: I need to do something.
Me: Ok, lets go over here and get on with it.
Tummy: Uuuum, no.
Me: You don't want to any more?
Tummy: No, I still want to. I just won't.
Me: Well, we'll just stay here until you do.
Tummy: *is defiant*

Eventually, it does what it needs to do and I go back to my normal life. Occasionally, it decides to be too enthusiastic, causing all sorts of other trouble. Some times it's one, followed directly by the other. I could not pick up any sort of pattern.

The doctor diagnosed it as IBS, as far as any "syndrome" can be "diagnosed". Which, of course, told me nothing. I was told to avoid stress and to take fibre supplements and drink lots of water.

I was also lactose intolerant, or so I thought.  I switched to lactose-free milk, but I still got sick. I'm also anaemic, so it was suggested that I might have coeliac disease, which I was tested for and it came up negative. Recently, friends of mine suggested I try going completley dairy-free. I looked up milk stuff and came across the possibility of caseine intolerance or allergy, and I figured that it couldn't do me any harm to try going dairy-free for a few weeks, particularly when I remembered that protein shakes always made me feel sick and that protein bars also made me unwell, but after a couple of hours.

This doesn't just include milk and cheese and ice cream. Nothing cooked in butter, nothing processed with any milk protein in it at all whih also includes flavoured chips and certain kinds of bread. So, lots and lots of paranoia whenever I eat anything that I didn't prepare myself until I figure out whether this is actually what's causing the problem.

So here I am, dairy-free for a few days. No idea how long it'll be before I can tell whether I'm feeling better, which is when I will also reintroduce a small amount of (lactose-free) milk into my diet to see what happens.

Wish me luck.

Smart little body

My body has a knack for knowing what it needs, at least as far as ingestion goes. See, a few years ago, I developed rheumatoid arthritis. Fortunately, it never got anywhere near as bad as what you see in the pictures but it was always a possibility.

Before I got diagnosed (it took four months to go from my noticing a swollen and sore joint in my hand to being told "this is what you've got"), I started having some other odd symptoms. I got really, really dizzy sometimes. I also started craving rare steak (I'd never had it rare before). I also randomly craved orange juice. I craved orange juice to the point that I had about a dozen mandarines and two big glasses of OJ, all in one sitting, before I felt sated.

I only found out a few months after my diagnosis that rheumatoid arthritis can cause iron deficiency, and that vitamin C helps you absorb iron. My body very clearly knew exactly what it needed!

Then there was starting to take Ritalin. Suddenly, I was no longer craving chocolate. I later learned ADHD is partly due to a lack of dopamine in the brain, and that chocolate increases dopamine, as do CNS stimulants... Again, my body had found something which gave it what it needed and craved it on a regular basis. In fact, one of the ways I can tell my medication is wearing off is that I start to crave chocolate :-p go figure.

I do sometimes like the way my body works.

More female TMI.

I want to rave at you all about how brilliant the Mooncup is. You're also about to learn a few things about my own anatomy.

I got one a few days ago, and it arrived right in the middle of a period I wasn't expecting to have (I've been avoiding them like the plague and was hoping to never have one ever again), but it became clear that I would have them at least occasionally (I forget to take the pill when I'm really sick, and apparently my body is only willing to go without bleeding for 6-8 weeks).

So, I ordered this thing after a friend of mine spent a lot of time raving about how awesome it is.

It is f'ing brilliant. It doesn't leak like tampons do, it can handle clots like tampons don't (stupid endometriosis), and it's reusable so I don't have to panic about running out of them. It can also be used before a period, so if you're expecting one at some point in the next three days and have a beach day tomorrow, then you don't have to worry about starting to bleed while at the beach. The Mooncup will take care of it.

It can also be used overnight. Unlike tampons, you're not going to get TSS so you can sleep comfortably without staining your sheets or ending up in ICU. There's also the fact that it sits lower than a tampon, which is great for me because tampons were very, very uncomfortable against my cervix. I'm not sure whether that was the result of the endometriosis or the retroverted uterus (which I've also got; have a diagram).

Getting it in and out takes practice and removing it is less comfortable than inserting it. I recommend using KY jelly or some other water-based lube for insertion because it just slides in, pops open and you're away. It's also good if you're new to using it and tend to tense up, because tense vaginal muscles make it more difficult to use.

I'm thrilled. If I have a daughter, she's getting one of these as soon as she hits puberty and she can start using it as soon as she feels ready to (these things are good for about a decade, or until you give birth so there won't be any rush if she's timid about it).

I've inserted (haha, pun) three small ads for it on my site because that's how awesome it is. One for the distributor in the UK, one in the US, and one in Australia.

Love: What it is, and when to know if it isn't

Having posted recently on how tumultuous my relationship with  my mother was (while we still had one; it’s been several months since we’ve spoken), I’d like to discuss abusive relationships in general.

From the Reach Out website, these are the signs of an abusive relationship:

Possessiveness

• Checking on you all the time to see where you are, what you're doing and who you're with.
• Trying to control where you can go and who they can see (this includes telling you they don't like/trust/are jealous of your friends for whatever reason; making feel you bad about hanging out with your friends/family)

Jealousy

• Accusing you without good reason of being unfaithful or flirting.
• Isolating you from family and friends, often by rude behaviour.

Put downs

• Putting you down, either publicly or privately by attacking how smart you are, your looks or capabilities.
• Constantly comparing you unfavourably with others.
• Blaming you for all the problems in the relationship and for their own behaviour toward you ("I only got mad because you kept perving at that other girl/guy!" - especially if you weren't actually perving)

Menace + threats

• Yelling, sulking and deliberately breaking things that you value.
• Threatening to use violence against you, your family, friends or even a pet.
• Saying things like 'no one else will want you'.

The key thing is that these behaviours are not present all the time. Generally speaking, in an abusive relationship, if it is good then it is very very good. There is joy and laughter, gifts, surprise dates in new places, strawberries covered in chocolate; the kind of stuff movies are made of. The other person is sweet and gentle and warm. When it is good, it can seem absolutely perfect. It seems like the most loving relationship in the world.


This can often cloud the bad things. 

"But he loves me... He just got angry because I was tactless and that's why he shouted and said nasty things. I'll just be more careful about how I say things next time."


"She loves me - I know she does because she's so wonderful all the time. She just gets frustrated when I do things wrong. She doesn't mean it when she puts me down, and she always apologises afterward..."

"She's just insecure because she's had a hard past. She's jealous of my friends now, but she'll get better when she realises that I do really love her and that she doesn't need to be jealous. Then she'll stop being angry when I want  a night out with 'the boys'. "

"He's just trying to look after me. He doesn't want me being felt up by strangers in a crowd, and that's fair enough I guess. Maybe I shouldn't go to that concert after all..."

I’d like to say this very clearly: If you are being treated in such a shameful way and it never changes; if the other person shows no sign of being willing to alter themselves and take steps to make themselves better as well (because it's always a two-person job), it is not love. To quote the above website:

When you are in a healthy relationship, both individuals support each other, sharing the good times and helping each other through the tough ones.  When someone matters deeply to you, and those feelings of trust and respect are returned, it enables us to face the world with confidence.

Building and maintaining a healthy relationship needs the commitment from both of sides in order to work at it. But it is worth it, because in a good relationship, you feel good about your boyfriend or girlfriend, and good about yourself.

To stay with someone if they treat you in ways that make you feel insecure and unhappy is not to stay with them out of love.

To put someone down, say horrible things to them, threaten them, and still stay with them is not staying with them out of love. 

To keep saying bad things and taking them back but not actively working to change the behaviour is not showing love.

“Love” is not just a feeling; it is a verb. Whether it is romantic love, familial love, or love for a pet, you can claim to  love all you want but if you do not consistently show it in your actions then you are not loving the person.

“Love” is a two-way street. If only one person is trying to change themselves while the other continues to lay the blame, then they are not in a loving relationship. 

“Compromise” is not one-sided. Compromise requires meeting half-way to get the best possible outcome for both parties, and sometimes there can be no compromise. If it is a difference that will affect one or more parties negatively; if it will have a negative impact on the wellbeing of either party in the long run, the relationship should end.



If you find yourself in a relationship where the characteristics above are ever on display, seek help from someone you trust. If you're not sure whether you're in one, talk to someone about it. Talk to a friend. A teacher. A family member. Your doctor. Anyone, just talk to them, as they may be able to see something you haven't. Don't be afraid that they'll judge you or that you'll look like a failure if your relationship isn't perfect or happy; appearances are a bad reason to be in a relationship anyway.

I hate the phrase “true love conquers all”. There are things love shouldn’t need to conquer. There are some things that, if it really were “true love”, wouldn’t exist to be conquered in the first place. Disney can get stuffed.

Chalk and... Chalk.

Chalk is pretty interesting stuff. It’s a sedimentary rock and is made from the remains of microorganisms. When combined with a blackboard, the image is one associated with learning. It is used in agriculture, gymnastics, even in building works.

It’s really interesting, useful, versatile stuff.

And I hate it. I loathe it with every fibre of my being. It is the most heinous substance known to man and should never, ever have been put into use as a writing implement. Just thinking about it is enough to make my skin try to crawl off the rest of my body so that it doesn’t have to risk touching the the hypothetical chalk. Actually, that could make a really good album title. But I digress.

I developed my aversion to chalk at some point in primary school. It’s not the screeching sound it makes on the board that’s the problem, as it is with most people - it’s the softer sound it makes normally which irritates me. As I just mentioned, I also can’t touch the stuff so being asked to write something on the board with chalk has always been a deep-seated fear of mine. Had whiteboards not become the dominant type of board, I would never have done an education degree because I would never have been able to work in teaching. If blackboards were still widely used, I either would never have gone into the profession or I would have used up every single cent of my photocopying credit on overhead projections and plain overhead sheets, and possibly the whole school’s yearly overhead budget. And then been fired for it.

I figured out recently that it’s not specifically chalk which is the problem, but rather having dry hands. When my hands are dry, I can’t touch anything; if I’ve just had a shower, I have to use really creamy moisturiser before I can handle anything fluffy (makes towelling off interesting) or made of paper, or even remotely grainy or dusty. Chalk, of course, dries the hands out and is also grainy and dusty, so we have a nice trifecta of “unpleasantness”.

The first time I cleaned out a non-disposable vacuum bag, the dust dried my hands out and then there was more dust to touch and that dried my hands further and made them even more sensitive to the fine particles and grit.... My hair stood on end, I felt like my teeth were being scraped by the dentist (only this was less enjoyable), and then something truly bizarre happened: I started getting hot flashes.

My whole body rebelled against this vile substance, even down to my temperature regulation system. At this point, I dropped the vacuum bag and called for help, because I was freaking out over how horrible it felt. My fiancé took over, and immediately understood my aversion to the task, because he knows about my aversion and his hands get dry too. 

He just doesn’t go into premature menopause over it.

Wisdom teeth. Gone. Urgh.

Teeth are out. Right now it's surprisingly painless. The numbness is driving me insane. I'll put up a proper post about it when I can move my brain again.

Evil nasty shark teeth.

So, my wisdom teeth came through when I was 18. I remember the teething being uncomfortable and thinking “So this is why babies cry about it” - the Terrible Twos suddenly make  a lot more sense, because having those teeth burrowing out of the flesh inside your face is friggin’ uncomfortable and it just Does. Not. Stop. I got through it by chewing tiny little mints with the part of my gum that was being assaulted from underneath by these semi-blunt objects that were forcing their way out, kind of like when you try to push your fist through dough. Poor dough.

The last time I went to the dentist before this year was shortly after my wisdom teeth came out (nearly 7 years earlier than this year's visit) and in that time, unbeknownst to me, the wisdom teeth had actually started to eat away at the molars in front of them! Kind of like a shark, surging out of the surface of the water (or gum, in this case) and taking a great big chunk out of the poor swimmer who’s just treading water, blissfully ignorant of what’s about to happen to them. Just a lot more slowly. And without the theme music.

My handwriting makes "Molar" look like "Molor". I do know how to spell, I just can't write clearly. This is why all my posts are typed rather than hand-written. Aside from the lack of choice when it comes to input device.

I was basically told by my dentist that I had to have them removed or I'd be dealing with decay and toothache and general ickiness in the mouthal area. That sounded kind of wrong, didn't it?

So, today, I'm getting my wisdom teeth thaken out. I’m actually quite frightened by what’s about to happen. I’m not so frightened of the surgery itself - I’m going to be under anaesthetic. It’s the anaesthetic which I’m terrified of  (and this blog really didn't help). I mean, I would much rather be knocked out and wake up with it all over and done with than be awake while someone drills and scrapes and pulls things out of my mouth (seriously, is it possible to talk about anything oral without it sounding dirty?), but I’m still panicking about the fact that, for several hours, I’ll have no consciousness and no ability to do anything.


Yes, I'm a control freak. It's just one of the things which makes me so charming and irresistable.

I had the same problem when I got my eye surgery done, but that wasn’t nearly as invasive as tooth extraction so I got away with a lower dose of Ativan and can remember most of what happened (it smelled like burning hair and the laser looked kind of like HAL; a slightly worrying combination, actually).

But, I’m going to be brave and go under completely, and trust that I’ll wake up slightly groggy and with no recollection of what I just went through. Fortunately they're removing all four teeth, so there's little chance of my waking up and findint that the'd removed  the wrong four teeth.  Oh I should so not have had that thought just then - there's one more thing to panic about!

So yeah. Wish me luck. And if there's a reduction in post frequency or quality at any point, blame it on the poor health I've had lately!

I'll post again with an update this afternoon when I'm home and conscious.


P.S.
In some unrelated news: Today is a year since I was diagnosed with ADHD. Happy ADDiversary? Or something?

If you play sob music backwards, you hear the Devil PMSing.

If you are squeamish about anatomy, don’t read on.

The uterus is an evil, evil thing. I’m sure everyone’s heard a woman complaining about its monthly rampage at least once before, so I’m not going to bore you with the details of my immediate, physical suffering.

So, I’ll bore you with details of some previous physical suffering instead.

I’ve always had lots of monthly pain and stuff, so I started taking the pill to control this and make my life easier. In March 2010, I thought to myself “Why not skip periods altogether!” (I get brilliant ideas like that) - and switched to Implanon.

For a while, it worked really well - I was free of Monthly Madness and it was awesome and I was thrilled at the awesomeness of DEFEATING NATURE!  I was like a GODDESS among women, smugly enjoying the fact that they were probably bleeding all over the place and worrying about changing their “sanitary products”, while I had no such problems. I was superior.

Hammers also defeat nature

Three months later, on a Friday, I got a stomach ache. I didn’t think much of it, figured there was nothing to do about it so I took some ibuprofen and left it at that. Had a bit more of the same over the weekend, but it didn’t seem like a big deal. I just got on with things, as you do.

Monday night found me collapsed on the floor of my housemate’s room, crying in pain and begging her to take me to the hospital. I had no idea what was wrong with me, except that my legs and stomach hurt more than anything I’d ever felt before and the legs may have actually been preparing themselves to fall right off, dooming me to enduring “legless” jokes from well-meaning friends trying to make me feel better about my new status as an amputee. It was that painful.

I called my fiancé and he met us at the hospital where they almost immediately ruled out appendicitis and then had us wait for several hours. The really cool thing was that they had a TV in the waiting room and were showing Scrubs. I just can’t think of anything better to show in a hospital than that show.

Eventually, they took blood for testing and got me onto a bed where they did lots of poking and prodding of my abdomen and couldn’t figure out what was causing the pain. They took a urine sample and tested that, too. All the test came up normal. All the tests came up normal. No abnormalities. Zip. Zilch. ZERO.

There was, apparently, NOTHING wrong with me. Aside from the horrible amounts of PAIN. Which had gone from a whopping 10 (worst pain I’d ever felt, and I’m not kidding), down to a 3 or a 4. Also, It was playing games with me - it’d have me convinced that it was getting better, and then it would spike up again with a “Hah! Gotcha! I was just kidding! I’M STILL HEEERREEEE!!!!”

They eventually sent me home at around 4am (we had left the house at around 10pm), and my housemate and I wrote the day off. My heroic fiancé went in to work and was actually fine. I have no idea how he managed it. He is like a GOD in that he has such a flexible diurnal clock - I am in awe, because I spent the day incapable of anything more coherent than “Buh.”

Over the course of less than a week, I went to 4 different doctors until I got to see my regular doctor again, who suggested endometriosis. He told me to go back on the pill and see how I go. After 2 days on the pill, I had one pain attack that got up to about 5 or 6, and haven’t had one since (which strongly supports the endometriosis hypothesis).

So, in short, my uterus hates me and loves being on the pill. It's a drug addict, and this is an unhealthy, drug-infused relationships where it only likes me because it's stoned on oestrogen.

Evil. Pure, unadulterated, EVIL. And also dysfunctional.

The Devil's Uterus

My 2nd ever trip to the Emergency Ward

As you may have guessed by my earlier posts, I was sick a fortnight ago. I had to take Tuesday and Wednesday off work because of it, that’s how horrible I felt. On Thursday, I was feeling better enough to go back to work and teach the kiddies once more. What I didn’t expect was for my SVT to be set off by the action of picking up my bag and provide me with a third, surprise sick day.

I’ve had SVT since I was at least 12 or 13. It used to occur in fairly short bursts, every 2-4 weeks, which gradually changed into one MASSIVE attack, every 13 or 14 months. By “massive”, I’m talking about a heart rate of around 200bpm for up to and sometimes, as happened last week, over an hour.

This wasn’t the first time I went to hospital for it. The first time was actually a rush trip in mum’s car and purely for the sake of getting an ECG so that it could be properly diagnosed. The first time I was sent there as an actual emergency was when I was 17 and at a fairly large sporting event. I was there in my role as a qualified first-aider, which is a nice little bit of irony, just to add some flavour. It was hot and humid (middle of summer), and I was treating a casualty who was feeling unwell.

Next thing I know, I bend down to pick up a pen off the floor and, on my way back up, my heart goes “PAAARTAAAY!!!!” and starts racing (Seriously, even my cardiac muscle has ADHD). It certainly picked the best place for it - I was in the main first aid room, with beds, about a dozen experienced first aiders, surrounded by first aid kits, oxygen kits, and everything you could possibly need for CPR (if it came to that, which it never does). For someone who is a terrible judge of time, I have awesome timing, though it does kind of suck being there to treat casualties and endind up a casualty yourself...  Sort of goes against the D in DRABC, D standing for “Danger”, and the first danger you look for being danger to yourself so that you don’t end up hurt and useless to the person who already is.

Anyway.

Next thing I knew, I was hooked up to a defibrillator and had 3 or 4 grown men looking on and looking extremely worried and anxious, wondering what to do with me and my heart rate of (only!) 105. They even told me that they’d have shocked me, had I not been conscious (SO GLAD I WAS CONSCIOUS)! I kept trying to reassure them I would be fine, but I think when you have a patient who has an abnormal rhythm AND a stupidly quick and faint pulse, it’s in the job description not to listen. So they called the ambulance for me. I think they were surprised (pleasantly, one would hope) when they called my parents and they were as dismissive of the episode as I was. They also notified my school, and we were all were pleasantly surprised when the head of campus called up to ask after my health. 

Naturally, my heart started beating normally again as the ambulance pulled in to the hospital. Still, I had plenty of witnesses and documentation to show that I wasn’t faking it and wasting everybody’s time, so I guess that’s something. 

Four hours and a lot of blood tests later, I was told that there was apparently nothing wrong with me and sent home. It was a bit of an adventure, and when I showed up to do first aid again on the next day at the same event (ran for a fortnight, I think), they weren’t far from wrapping me up in cotton wool and keeping me in the first aid room until it happened again. Thankfully, it didn’t and I was able to treat casualties rather than being one. 

Gotta love medical adventures.

Party Hearty!

The Battle is being waged.

I don’t cope well with being sick. My whole body gets involved and beaten up rather badly every time a virus comes along and decides that this section of the playground (AKA the “human race”) is now ITS turf, demands my body’s lunch money and tells it to do its homework for it.

My body, being a brave little trooper, valiantly says “NO! This is MY turf and you can’t have my lunch money and you can do your own stupid homework!”, and blows a raspberry at the offending bug before the scene cuts and the next shot is of me, lying on the couch in a sea of tissues and looking like I’d just been hit by a truck. Or three.

This wasn’t such an issue when I was a kid, because I’d stay home from school and suffer along merrily while being taken care of for as long as I was being beaten and bullied by the nasty, microscopic insurgents.

These days, it’s more like guerilla warfare. We circle each other, we hide, we take our shots when we can. Then, wounded, we hide again until the next day when the battle starts afresh. 

I have to pick my moments, and decide carefully what I need to do and when I can do it. When the enemy is sleeping so that I can sneak past it and buy groceries, or when they’re most distracted by the flare I threw at them (Strepsils, in this case) so that I can teach the class without sounding like Lurch from The Addams Family.

Despite an increased ability to get on with things, being a grown-up and being sick is still a hard war to fight. It is made even more difficult by the fact that you can no longer launch a full-on assault of constant rest and hot soup. You are now playing chess with the enemy, anticipating the next move and hoping to out-do them before they out-do you.

You could write novels (or movie scripts) based on this stuff.

Feet are evil.

There are few body parts which are worse to have cold than your feet. Nose is ok, you can wrap your hands around it and catch the warm breath. Hands are fine, as you can breathe on them, rub them together, put them under your arms, between your thighs, in your pockets... Very versatile when it comes to warming.

But not so with feet. I think feet got angry about being not-quite-hands. They are all useful on other great apes and are climbed with and gripped with and you can do all sorts of things with them. But the first time human feet appeared, I think they knew they’d been gypped. Suddenly, walking was the only thing they were good for. And they knew it.

So, they sought revenge. They thought long and hard about the best way to get back at humans for changing them into these single-purpose, next-to-useless, kind of ugly appendages.

They got COLD. They knew that we’d be more or less helpless against it - you can get around with your hands being warmed by another body part, but not so with feet. They knew that society would frown upon us taking weird poses to try to get some life back into those toes; they knew we wouldn’t be able to do a thing for most of the day.

Feet are evil, vindictive, nasty things and should be replaced with something nicer.

This post was brought to you by the fact that I’m stuck in a freezing cold office with NO HEATING and my FEET are FROZEN.