Friday I saw my midwife for “well woman care”… which is alternacare-speak for a good old-fashioned pap smear and internal exam. No doubt you’ll all be stoked to hear that my cervix looks healthy, and that I have no lumpy breast tissue. And my blood pressure is great, and I appear to be generally well. (Physically. As we all know, I’m quite whacked out of my head in my old age. Squonk.)
She put me on some suppliments… DHEA, whatever the hell that is, and B6. The B6 is supposed to help with the new screwiness of my non-fertile fertility cycle; the DHEA is supposed to, I don’t know, make me feel better. I haven’t bothered to look either suppliment up yet, to be honest. Which might actually mean the DHEA is working, because normally I’d have researched the shit out of it. (By “normally,” I mean the freak I’ve turned into in these past couple of years. Pre-freak, I would have researched it when I damn well got around to it.)
I had only mild anxiety over the weekend. A few spikes here and there, but nothing terrible. It seems to be tapering off. God, I hope so. I cannot express HOW SICK I AM of feeling my heart lurch and skip beats. It gets old really fast, let me tell you, to be repeatedly kicked in the chest – from the inside – by your own laboring heart.
Why is it that when a woman tells a man she’s going to have a gyno exam, the man invariably says, “Have fun with that,” while making a weird face? Have fun with that? Have FUN with that? Okay, buddy, when you get old enough to need prostate exams, I’ll be chortling with undisguised GLEE when I encourage you to enjoy yourself at the proctologist’s!
Today it’s too chilly to lie out, which is a bummer. I figured after raining all weekend the least Nature could do is help me out with my tan. But no, apparently she wants me to clean my house instead. Bitch.
Will you still love me if I reveal that I have not bathed since last Thursday? (Please note: I haven’t gone anywhere or seen anyone since Friday, so this experiment isn’t actually hurting anyone.) I think I no longer like to bathe. In fact, I think I’ve gotten bored of it. Being oily-skinned, I spent many, many, many years of my life bathing every single solitary day – and I think I may have hit my quota. Now I just don’t want to bother. I mean, I want to be clean and smell nice, but getting in the shower seems like such a pain in the ass when there’s other stuff to do. Like take a nap.
Plus Joe was telling me the other day that some healer was telling him that Westerners bathe too much; that certain things need to be reabsorbed by the skin after exertion or excercize, and that chronic rampant bathing is actually a hazard to healthy joint function. So there.
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I shower 3 times a week max. More than that dries out my skin and hair too much.
I usually shower every other day. It’s time wasted in the morning when I could be drinking coffee instead. Seriously, personal hygiene getting in the way of caffeine? I don’t think SO.
Since I’m always at home and usually don’t see anyone I only bath about every 2-3 days. I feel so gross by the third day but don’t really care. Who is going to see me anyway. I do bath for my boyfriend so as to not gross him out. When I know I won’t see him i just don’t bother. Too much work.
I hope you’re feeling better today. It seems like you’ve had a rough time lately. Hang in there!
Did you get a package from me? Just want to make sure that it made it there. =0)
Yay! You’re feeling better!
One thing I really love about pregnancy (besides having fun at all the appointments) is that I can get away with washing my hair only every OTHER day. Pre-preg, it was so greasy I couldn’t get away with that without a hat/kercheif/bandanna.
I don’t want to sound like some kind of public service announcement but…..I want to be certain that you know that the Pap smear only shows when you have abnormal cells for cervical or sometimes uterine cancer. It does not alert you at all to ovarian cancer. I say this because many people aren’t aware of this. They think if they have a yearly pap they are covered. The best way to find ovarian cancer is by having a pelvic exam, ultrasound or CA125 blood test. The symptoms of ovarian cancer are very subtle. They include feeling bloated, upset stomach or indigestion, change in bowel habits….all symptoms that are very common and wouldn’t cause much worry. Usually by the time a woman notices something is wrong it is too late, that is why the survival rate for ovarian cancer is so low.
I’ll get off my soapbox now, in case you couldn’t guess I had ovarian cancer and was one of the lucky ones that have made it 3 years now. I had a less than 5 percent chance of living. I feel a real responsibility to spread the word to women to listen to what your body tells you. Maybe you know this already, but I don’t take anything for granted.
Sorry for bringing the comments to such a serious level when everyone is talking about how smelly they can get. The main thing I get concerned about in that arena is how long the hair on my legs can get before I shave them. Ironically that was one of the “good” things about chemo…..no hair growing anywhere!!!!
Thanks for the PSA, Rufus. Never anything wrong with educating us!
When I saw PSA, I had to scroll back up to see if someone was talking about their prostate. Hey, gotta have equal air time if we get to discuss our uteruses. Oh wait a sec, I don’t have one of those.
Anywhoodle, not sure why you go to a midwife for a well woman exam, but uh sure…..
I think I had a panic attack yesterday when I was walking the pup through the twink part of the park. I got all nervous and freaked out and my heart was racing and it didn’t subside until we got almost out of the park. Of course, it could have been a spirit on my back (since the park used to be the city cemetary and there’s still 2000 bodies buried there). It was just unreal. I was almost shaking.
Oh yeah, I shower every day, sometimes more than once.
Sounds like a panic attack. But it could have been ghosts. Typical panic attack (a) makes you suspect you’re dying and (b) lasts about ten minutes.
The park has a twink section?!?
Oh, also:
> Anywhoodle, not sure why you go to a midwife for a
> well woman exam, but uh sure…..
That’s what midwives are for; they don’t just do births.
My midwife works out of an apartment she has set up as her clinic. It’s comfortable and homey, rather than sterile and clinical. Appointments take an hour rather than six minutes. She listens. She knows her clients. She’s also an RN, and keeps well up on her training.
She doesn’t just care for women, either – I’ve taken my husband to her to get a cyst removed. She gave him a local and removed the cyst while he lounged on a comfortable day bed. It cost $75. The same procedure in a doctor’s office would have been at least twice that.
The park has a twink section, a dyke section, a troll section, a bear section and a pro section. I have to pass through all of these on my afternoon walk.
The nervousness lasted for at least 10 minutes yesterday. All I could think about was eating Oreos. Maybe it was just hunger. LOL
Nice. We don’t have any parks like that around here – I think the cruising in rural Iowa is confined mainly to restrooms, probably. Good thing you have your Miss to protect you from all that twinkiness. Snort!