whiskey in a teacup . com

-Thanks to all for your comments, emails, and other forms of high-tech communication consoling me on my incident!   My head is gradually feeling better, although some soreness/bruising has sprung up at my shoulder, top vertebrae, and various protrudy skullbits that also hit the wall or floor when I fell.  Also, in the days leading up to my own personal episode of Headbangers’ Ball, I was already running critically low on comfortable sleeping positions.  Add eight staples to the head and suddenly that number of positions has plummeted ever lower!  To combat the fatigue that comes with this sleeplessness, I have gone into energy conservation mode, which involves a lot of sitting around.  It suits me.

-All this resting gives me plenty of time to lift my shirt up and not only feel, but see the baby kicking, punching, and gallivanting in my womb.  Sometimes it looks like a team of feral hamsters running around just under the skin; other times it’s so forceful that I exclaim, “Change my order to the soup!” Pretty neat, though.  Another behavior I have noticed is that at night, as I am tossing and turning and struggling to get comfortable, he too seems to toss and turn within me.  This is amusing but also prompts one to think, hey little dude, some of us would LOVE to be floating weightlessly in a pool of warm liquid right about now…enjoy it while you can.

This morning Jared and I arrived at the hospital for a routine midwife appointment.  As we were checking in I realized I had forgotten some medical documents in the car.  We headed back out to the parking lot to get the paperwork, then came back in and opted to take the stairs rather than wait for the elevator.  As we ascended, I began to feel ominously queasy and weak and sat down for a moment.  I heard some people coming, so not wanting to block the stairs I stood back up and we kept walking.  We eventually realized we were in the wrong stairwell and would have to go all the way back downstairs and start over.  “Goddammit,” I muttered.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in a wheelchair, having my blood sugar tested and trying to see through the black fog that filled my field of vision.  Various nurses and techs were asking me what happened; I could only turn quizzically to Jared, who explained that I had passed out and dropped to the floor, pausing on the way down to smack my head against a concrete wall.  I was brought into the ER, where my blood pressure bottomed out at 70/30 before responding to an IV of saline.  My bloody pillowcase indicated a laceration to the back of my head which was eventually stapled shut.  I was then whisked away for an ultrasound to make sure the baby and placenta were still firmly in place, which indeed they were.  (It was smart thinking to absorb the impact of the fall with my head instead of my belly!)

After five fun-filled hours I was released back into the wild.  It was a sub-optimal way to spend the day, but if you’re going to sustain a head injury while pregnant, there’s really no better place to do it than inside one of the state’s premier hospitals, mere feet away from help.

-The swine flu is not the plague, nor the ebola virus, nor that rage virus that turns you into a zombie.  It’s the flu.  It’s probably not going to kill you, except if it does….but it probably won’t.

-That being said, the flu sucks ass.  It’s best to avoid it if you can.

-If you’re a healthy person with no underlying illnesses, and you aren’t routinely exposed to sick people, you don’t really need the flu shot, but nor will it hurt you to get it.  You should get it if you want to, and if you don’t want to, then don’t.

-If you are the kind of brainless tool who frequents pregnancy message boards and spews garbage about how the swine flu vaccine “hasn’t been tested” and you don’t want to expose your fetus to any “chemicals”, then I have a couple of questions for you:  Do you personally conduct a clinical trial before you pop your prenatal vitamin or any other medication?  Do you personally grow all the food you consume in your own backyard?  If you answered “no” to either of these, then you need to shut up post-haste, as your body is chock full of “untested” chemicals, and your mouth is full of nonsense.

-Pregnant women should probably get the flu shot, not because the flu spells immediate death for themselves and their babies, but because pregnancy and the flu each tax the body enough that there’s no reason to risk experiencing them both simultaneously.  Contracting an illness that gives you a high fever and puts you at risk for dehydration is, simply put, a lot more dangerous for your unborn baby than any vaccine.  Also keep in mind that newborns can’t get the flu shot, so if you are protected against it you are also protecting your future baby.

-If you’re pregnant and just plain choose not to get the flu shot, then don’t.  It is, after all, a personal choice.

-If your reasons for not getting the flu shot have anything to do with the word “autism”, then this is all I have to say to you.

Recently, Jared was browsing through video game titles on his Xbox.  There’s a “marketplace” feature that shows you images of the games’ cover art and lets you scroll through until you find one that looks interesting.  One game in particular had some sort of apocalyptic-looking theme, and due to the weird font I misread the title as “Blad Space” (it was, in fact, Dead Space).  This gave me a great idea for an interstitial cystitis themed video game, in which your character must survive (and save the world or whatever) by  consuming IC-compatible foods and beverages.  If you have coffee, it will deplete your power but you will live as long as you drink water for the rest of the day.  If you do something insane like have pasta with red sauce AND have a cup of tea, you die.

I was amusing the shit out of myself pitching this idea to Jared, and since he is hip to the IC scene he played along…but unfortunately, in the Venn diagram comprised of “people who buy video games” and “people who suffer from inflammatory bladder conditions”, there is probably not a lot of overlap.  Mostly because people who suffer from inflammatory bladder conditions don’t have many hobbies beyond complaining, injecting lidocaine into their urethras, and applying ice to their pelvic areas.  We know how to party.

For some reason, possibly having to do with the human being who lives in a heavy sac directly on top of my bladder, my IC has been flaring up lately.  As a result, I have pretty much wanted to kill myself and everyone else on earth, but I stay positive by reminding myself that this too shall pass (i.e., someday I actually WILL die!) and that there are worse things in this world than chronic, searing pain (things like…the Holocaust!).  I’m sure I’ll feel better soon enough, but until then:  meh.

Shortly after the ultrasound tech put a very unambiguous image of our son’s junk on the monitor and invited me to guess the sex, I turned to Jared and exclaimed, “Motherboy!”  He responded that he was glad our son would be raised in a world where shows like Arrested Development and Curb Your Enthusiasm exist.  When I pointed out that it would be many, many years before CYE would even approach appropriate viewing for the young master, Jared scoffed, and the conversation pretty much petered out from there…but I digress.  Motherboy!

1 protein bar

1 brunch (the Basic, served over-hard with wheat toast, from Sound Bites)

half-decaf coffee, green tea, ginger ale, tons of water

yogurt

1 bagel with cream cheese

1 facon (fake bacon) sandwich

probably a bunch of other food that I can’t recall

1 little baby boy!  Our son.