I recently fainted, as you can read about here: (Of Blood and Butterflies)
It was scary and seemingly random.
I tried to think of any other time I could have passed out like that, and I managed to remember one specific incident.
I didn't count this because it wasn't entirely random. It could have been from a lot of things.
The whole situation was kind of stupid.
About four years ago, I was having some serious issues with heavy bleeding forever until signs of anemia.
Different pills did nothing. I had already been on the patch for twelve years and it had been amazing for alleviating the intense cramps I had been having.
They even kept me out of school sometimes as a kid, which is why I was put on the patch so young.
So, it was a little heart breaking when I started having those other, new problems, and needed to try something new.
Even more upsetting was that a bazillion different pills did nothing.
My options were then surgery or getting an IUD.
Clearly, one option seemed a little nicer than the other.
Since the worst case scenarios involving the IUD were pretty much an infection that would happen really early on, if at all, and then it would need to be removed, and/or being unable to get pregnant even after it is removed.
Because I had already made the choice to adopt if I ever have children at all, this was not a huge downside for me.
*Cue an uproar of a lot of horrible things people automatically say to me when they hear that, as though my decision to not have children somehow directly affects whether or not THEY can have kids. …*
You know what? My body, my family history, my over populated planet, my choice.
I just want to state here, I'm totally all for other people having babies. It is a beautiful thing. It really is.
For you.
Not my thing.
Also, after FOUR YEARS of having the IUD, NOW I'm getting random people saying, "Oh my god!! Didn't you know there are RISKS?? OH MY GOD YOU COULD BE DEAD RIGHT NOW."
Right.
You know, I got this same speech from people seeing lawsuits concerning the very things my doctor had warned me about when I was on the patch too, and again, YEARS after it would have affected me.
Chill the Hell out.
*ahem*
In any case, there was a little issue because since I hadn't had a child before and since I wasn't married, even though the other option was an invasive surgery, it was going to be a big pain in the ass to convince the gynecologist's office to give me an IUD.
…
Even though she was the one to suggest it.
The way around it? Simple! Have my now ex-boyfriend come in, say we're engaged, and basically give the O.K. for me to have it.
Right.
In this day and age, MY doctor needed a MAN'S permission to do something to MY body to possibly prevent MY BODY getting pregnant.
WHAT??
The main thing here is that I needed it to not die of something else, so this shouldn't have even been a question.
For the record, this thankfully didn't end in a lawsuit, but for fuck's sake, it could have.
Also for the record, my current gynecologist from this same office is amazing and very kind and intelligent.
A lot of the nurse practitioners are too. I just had some bad luck for a bit.
In any case, once it was all decided that I was going to have this, no one mentioned the real reason why they are iffy about a woman who hasn't given birth having an IUD placed.
The reason I was given was that it could make me infertile and I'd never have the beautiful experience of having a screaming, shit covered animal rip from my loins.
And really? I don't hate children. I don't know what to do with infants… but I like kids a lot once they hit like three years old.
Until then, I don't know what to do when I'm near an infant.
I don't find them cute.
They scare me, actually.
Anyway, the REAL reason it's iffy is because if you haven't had a baby, getting an IUD implanted can be excruciating.
That would have been nice to know.
I even had an anti anxiety prescribed to relax me for the procedure, but no pain pill was ever offered.
Fun fact, the anti anxiety did nothing.
I blamed it for fainting later though.
See, I was still super tense during the procedure.
I tried to meditate through it, but the nurse practitioner's assistant kept thinking I was passing out (Hahahaha) and kept SCREAMING AT ME to make sure I was awake.
So, you know, that sucked.
After the fact, I got dressed, left the room, and the last thing I saw was a different nurse practitioner who is often really mean, looking at me with the most concerned face I've ever seen.
Then everything went black.
I blamed the anti-anxiety finally kicking in, and the stress, and a general drop in blood pressure. This could all still be accurate.
I remember Dad's car, and the couch at my parent's place.
Then I remember the car again, and demanding to be taken the hour and a half back to school.
Here's the fun part.
My body didn't really know what to do with it.
Contractions happened.
Sort of ironically, this made me really not want to ever have biological children even more than I already did not want to go through that process.
At school, I was just in time for team trivia. By the way, I remember this and ask myself, "Where was my boyfriend?"
There are many reasons that relationship did not work out.
Anyway, I answered a lot of questions, and I answered them correctly, but they came out kind of…
We managed to actually win too.
So, okay. I've fainted before.
Hmm.
Guess I'll keep that in mind?
So, lemme tell you 'bout yesterday morning and why I didn't go to class last night.
As you may have gathered by now, my health has been questionable for the past two years, but it's mostly been my mental health, with a dash of "WHY CAN'T I SWALLOW ANYTHING???"
Yesterday, my physical health had an interesting turn.
See, I was all sure of myself, and I had eaten breakfast and everything…
I was gonna be an adult.
So, I decide I'm going to make myself some pizza rolls (adults do that, right?) and I reach my hand into the bag, which is frozen…
And holy shit it hurts.
Now, normally, cold does kind of suck on my hands… but this was different. This was a shocking pain. I attempted to run warm water over my hand, but it couldn't get warm enough.
Then my head got unreasonably cold, and a slight nausea started.
It was kind of like Spidey-senses were going off but there was nothing going on.
At first, I thought I was having an allergic reaction, because that is always my assumption.
Then, I looked into it and checked my symptoms, which is generally how I calm myself down.
I noticed that I wasn't having a panic attack because my heart wasn't racing. In fact, I had trouble finding my pulse at all.
This thought did cross my mind:
I went to the bathroom, because the nausea had pretty much stopped, but I figured maybe something was going on down there.
When I sat down, my vision started to go.
I'd like it stated here that I, among the panic and thinking I'm dying, took the time to consciously decide to flush the toilet.
Like, I thought to myself, "Well, that would just be impolite."
So, then I rush to the bedroom.
I have experienced little bouts of vertigo before, but they are normally when I just get up way too fast, and then I sit down, or lay down for a second and I'm fine.
This wasn't that.
Here is a rough blueprint of how not-right I was in my mostly blacked out state:
If that doesn't make any sense, basically, all I had to do was go straight forward from the door to the bed.
Instead, I took a hard left and found myself in a tiny area between stuff on the floor next to a giant computer desk and the guitar.
EDIT: I realize that we have a lot of guitars in this place, so this is what I woke up to:
My Knight figures I subconsciously wanted to play on the computer while being blacked out.
Our housemate found me. I woke up to him very gently trying to remove the stuff that had fallen onto my feet, and looking concerned as to whether I had hit my head or broken my leg or anything like that.
Thankfully, I was fine.
He handed me juice and I climbed into bed.
At some point, I started texting people about what had happened, because I realized that it was not normal.
Naturally, my Knight flipped out and wanted to come save me… from… something?
I got an appointment with my doctor and fled with my mother to see what could be wrong. My Knight met us there.
My doctor was understandably confused as to why I had a posse with me to talk about my period lasting two weeks, a possible inner ear problem, and hey, lets do blood work for good measure.
She agreed with all of these points.
What didn't get said, for whatever reason, is that my mother used to faint a lot when she was my age. My grandmother used to faint too.
THIS RUNS IN THE FAMILY but my mom just like… forgot. I guess.
So, hopefully that means it's fine. My thought is that if no one else ever went to the doctor about it, maybe there is a way to fix it, and even if not, clearly they both lived their lives just fine.
I'm hoping it's not a thyroid issue. Every lady in my family has one.
Some hyper, some hypo, but everyone does.
I've had mine tested a few times already, though it would explain a lot if there was actually something wrong with it now.
It's also not the worst thing in the world, but since I'm still panicking over taking a new kind of Advil if I ever have a headache, I can't imagine the intense stress that would come from having to take a pill for my thyroid every day.
Obviously, I would do whatever I need to do…
But come on. I just want a break, you know? For a little bit?
It all comes down to the fact that I do freak out inside my head about every single thing ever, so when there is actually something dire going on, I tend to assume that there is no reason to panic.
I don't trust myself anymore, and so I automatically become MORE chill if something is actually wrong.
In any case, I was really nervous about getting blood work done.
I have gotten a lot of blood drawn in the past couple of years, but I'm always nervous.
About everything, really.
The lady was really nice though.
Plus, she didn't blink an eye when I asked for a sticker after getting my blood drawn.
She asked the logical question, of course, which was, "Do you have any children?"
The answer is no… I just wanted stickers. I responded, "Nope, but I have a boyfriend."
Her perfect response? "Ah. Well, that's pretty much the same thing."
She gave me the prettiest (and probably most adult she had) stickers ever:
CLOSE UPS:
Can you tell I'm really excited?
My Knight and I stopped by my parent's house for some well needed protein, then went off to shop for food. I got interestingly irritable at some points, like a panic attack wanted to show up but just wouldn't come.
It was like the emotional equivalent of not wanting to burp, needing to burp, and just having it not happen either way.
We bought pumpkins! I still want a slightly larger one, but these are decent sized pumpkins… and the big one I wanted was full of bug holes.
Worms and bugs have become a thing in my life. … I'll get to that in the next post.
In any case, by the time we got back home, I had an hour left of class, but about half an hour to get there. It just wasn't worth it.
I sent a few emails back and forth to my teacher. She asked if I should talk to my advisor about having some time off.
The fact is that even if this was partly from stress, I'm not willing to take any other years off from school. I've already been in it too long, and already have started questioning over and over what I'm doing with my life.
I have to finish. I'm doing well enough in two out of three of them that I'm not concerned (yet) and I'm half way though.
The trick will be doing well on my presentations, which is what screwed me up a bit in my Wednesday class.
I still assume I'm not going to fail that class, but that doesn't mean my grade will be particularly stellar either.
We'll see.
For now, I'm going to just… Keep going.
And if it turns out there is something wrong that needs fixing, so be it.
As you may know from Laundry Day is a Very Dangerous Day, our cat has been shitting all the goddamn where.
She had already been to the vet and been dubbed healthy. We've tried new cat toys, litter, litter boxes, no litter boxes, too many litter boxes...
Finally it was decided to clip off the hair from her butt and see if that would help.
The cat is trolling us, so we decided to humiliate her. No, not really. Really, it was supposed to make her more comfortable. She was also going to get another check up just to be sure.
Getting her into the crate was an adventure. My mother told me to secretly get the crate while she tricked the cat enough to pick the cat up, facing her away from said crate.
Then, we had to pour the cat into the crate, with the crate facing upward.
I shit you not. The cat was most displeased.
The car ride was horrible, if only for the amazing amount of sad, SAD cat whining coming from the back seat.
Made worse by my mother's amazing ability to say horrible things as though they are not horrible.
Once there, she was equally difficult to dump out of the crate.
When taken away to have her butt hair clipped, I drew this at the office:
Accurate.
Getting her back in to go home was easy, and she was very quiet on the ride home.
Since then, she's just been vomiting instead.
...On my purse.
