Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • It’s not always what you think

    This is a guest post from Tanya at Living Right Now. I offered to host because this post deals with some sensitive issues and she didn’t want it on her own site.

    ***

    I like to think of myself as ‘normal.’ I’m 5’6, brown hair, green eyes, am 23 years old and have a partner and a toddler. I’m on my second University degree, I’m going to soon be an Art Teacher. I try to be a good person, and I need to point out that I have been with N for nearly four years. I didn’t think this sort of thing would happen to me, ever.

    It started when we went to the pool. I was dry and itchy down there. I thought it was thrush but by the end of the day I was chaffing as well. It was sore and I felt dizzy, hot and generally unwell. I thought that maybe I had been sunburned and was just feeling a touch a heatstroke. I went home and sat on the couch uncomfortably.

    By the next day I was in pain. It was itchy and sore and there were lumps forming on my lady parts. When I tried to scratch the pain shot through me. The first thing I thought of was a heat rash, but the lumps seemed to indicate something else. I booked into the doctor and surprisingly got an appointment the same day with the lady doctor at the local practice.

    I had to wait for an hour in the doctor’s surgery, with itchy lady parts and the urge to stand up, drop my pants and try to scratch it. It was uncomfortable. The lady in front of me had a brand new baby, cooing over her kept me occupied for a few minutes. I then started to watch people coming in and out of the surgery. I witnessed a young lady and what I assumed was her partner appearing at the desk after being seen by a doctor. She was in tears and he was rubbing her back sympathetically but smiling at the same time. She then went next door to have bloods done. I guessed a pregnancy.

    I finally was called to the surgery and I explained my symptoms to the doctor. I sighed when she asked me to lay on the bed so she could have a look.

    ‘Uh huh, yes.’ She said thoughtfully. ‘Herpes simplex.’

    I asked her to repeat herself.

    ‘Herpes. Herpes? Do you know what herpes is?’ She asked.

    ‘I do. But. I’ve been with the same person for four years. It’s impossible.’

    ‘The virus can lay dormant for a long time…’ she started, but I wasn’t listening. I was crunching numbers in my head. I had only been with two people, ever. The first one I was his first and he was mine. There is no way I could have picked up herpes.

    ‘You don’t understand…I cannot have contracted this at all. There’s no way.’ I began. I could see that she wasn’t interested in my excuses, and told me that it was perfectly normal, and okay, and lots of people contract this virus through sexual activities.

    I gave up and sat there glumly. She explained the medication to me and gave me a prescription. I left the surgery in a daze.

    In the car something occurred to me. He must have cheated on me, I thought. I burst into tears and by the time I walked in the door at home I was sobbing loudly. N and our housemate J were both panicked and N held me tight and asked me what had happened. When I told him he shook his head in disbelief.

    ‘That’s impossible.’ He said.

    ‘I know.’ I replied, but I wasn’t believing it for a second.

    I grabbed some money and headed to the chemist to humiliate myself again. I was more than embarrassed and I felt dirty somehow. How could I have an STI? Doesn’t that only happen to people who sleep around a lot? Did he cheat? Does he have it? My mind was racing with questions. I picked up the medication and noticed the pharmacy assistant give me a quick glance up and down as she handed me the package. She was tall, blonde and gorgeous, of course. She would never get herpes.

    I spent the rest of the day half in tears and couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone. One of my best friends appeared online and I dropped the bomb on her. We hadn’t been on great terms lately but luckily she was fully sympathetic and I was thankful.

    The accusations in my head were physically displayed in my disinterest in touching, or even being next to N. For one thing I felt dirty, and I blamed him. In my head I accused him of cheating, or of at least giving me a disease. I researched the condition on the Internet and once you have contracted it, the virus never goes away. I was stuck with this for the rest of my life and it could reappear at any time. This sent me into a depression and I moped around for a few days before N approached me with a theory.

    He reminded me that he had had severe coldsores a week before my symptoms appeared. I had kissed him just as they were starting to clear up and knowing that coldsores are a form of herpes, I could have contracted them that way. I dismissed his theory and backed it up by research done on the Internet. (Good old Google!) Coldsores were the herpes simplex virus one, or HSV1. Herpes transmitted sexually were HSV2. Two completely different strains.

    I can’t even explain how upset I was. It sounds so stupid but once you’ve been there you would understand. I felt dirty as well as sick and I was in too much pain to wear underpants so I lived in my pyjamas for a week. I was so angry and wished there was a way that I could have prevented this from happening. It was disgusting. I was disgusting. I had a disease which I would pass on to anyone. I was unclean. J shared my view as he had been accused of passing on an STI and understood how dirty and wrong I felt. I wasn’t talking to N often because in the back of my head there were still accusations that wouldn’t leave my thoughts. I didn’t want him to know this because I didn’t want him to know what I had been thinking if somehow my accusations were wrong.

    The next few days passed in a blur, the sores were nearly cleared up, but others things were weighing down on top of me. I decided that the best thing to do would be to go back to the doctor and find answers. I was glad that I didn’t have to have a blood test, only a urine test to determine what was really going on down there.

    The tests backed up N’s theory, no HSV2 virus. No cheating. No shame.

    See, the things is that the HSV1 virus is in 80% of people. The majority of people only know this when they get coldsores. But what a lot of people don’t know is that the coldsores can appear on other areas of your body, even the genital area. I caught the virus off N, and with Uni assignments looming upon me I was stressed which triggered the outbreak. Instead of coldsores on my face, they appeared elsewhere. I could now have coldsores at any time, although it is ‘unlikely’ that they will appear there again, and more likely that they will appear on my face. (Yay me.)

    I think this is important for everyone to know, if you get the symptoms I did, don’t just assume the worst. It may not be what you think.

  • World Party Tasmania

    The lovely Stephen Estcourt has been working tirelessly the last few months to put together the World Party Tasmania and I’m excited to be attending!

    As today went from bad to worse to slightly better to ear bleedingly bad, going out on Saturday sans children was something I was holding on to.

    So Saturday! I will be in the city, maybe with my camera, attending an amazing food fair and getting to meet some more of my twitter peeps.

    Are you going to be there?

  • Saving Humanity?

    After the nightmare that was my Gyn visit recently, I went to my GP to ask about the new drugs.

    Surprisingly (ha!) with a close family history of blood clots, I shouldn’t be taking anything to make my blood clot, except under direct medical supervision, which we assume means only if I’m in hospital being monitored. I’m incredibly annoyed that they were prescribed without pertinent questions being asked first.

    I had a good whinge about the medical system and got myself referred to a different Gyn, in a private practice. So dammit, I’m going to be listened to, even if I’ve got to pay for the privilege outright.

    With the EDS, a family history of blood clots (from the other side of the family) Gyn issues and everything else stacking up, my GP quipped that our family had all these issues, so that the rest of humanity didn’t have to.

    Which sort of hit home.

    I try really hard not to count the labels were dealing with, but we’ve got a whole host of things going wrong medically.

    A veritable melting pot of fuckedupedness.

    I mean, sure I can laugh about it, but what a nightmare.

    And once, just once, I’d like to be not saving the rest of humanity from disease. You know? It just feels like a little much for one person to deal with.

    They’re definitely not wrong when they tell you that one broken gene leads to a host of issues.

  • Cocktails at Naptime

    Emma from Mommy has a Headache was one of the very first blogs I ever read, and she was one of my first commenters. So when I heard she’d written a book with Gillian and was looking for reviewers, I waved my hands wildly in the air (okay, I might have emailed her) and asked for a copy.

    And?

    It’s brilliant. The best parenting book I’ve ever read. I was giggling before I’d even finished the first chapter.

    They declare it to be a ‘woefully inadequate guide to early motherhood’ and they’re right, insomuch as NOTHING can actually prepare you for childbirth and the sudden responsibility of a baby. They send you home without an instruction manual for gods sake. How are we meant to know how to stop the kid screaming?

    Some things hit home – like ‘was a student midwife having a go at sewing you up afterwards?’ because um, YES. My vagina was not right for years after that. It wasn’t a student midwife, but a student ob/gyn who while she wasn’t doing her first set of stitches, was doing her first episiotomy. Add in my tendency to skin tearing and she pulled those stitches out three times before she finally gave up with a ‘that will do, sigh’. I mean, c’mon!

    It answers questions you weren’t even game to speak aloud, like ‘will I ever have sex again?’ and ‘will I ever WANT to have sex again?’ as well as telling you how to avoid early onset ‘mumitis’ (when you turn into your mother.) Sadly, the mumitis information comes too late for me, as my garden and rapidly growing menagerie catapult me firmly into Mum territory. Of course, I’d argue that I’m merely being creative with my money, but no matter.

    It’s definitely the book you want to be reading if you’re a real mum: aka, not a celeb mum. It includes a handy exercise guide (weight lifting! your baby will only get heavier and will want to be thrown in the air. Ski training! Someone has spilled yogurt all over the floor and you need to clean it up, without falling in it) and a guide on how to make mum friends (don’t try to bribe them).

    Cocktails at Naptime is the perfect book for new mothers because we all need to laugh about how messed up our vagina is after pushing a 3.kg blob through it.

    For more info about Cocktails at Naptime, check out the website, with links to where you can buy a copy and info on the authors. OR you can do what I do and check out their blog. Every book needs a blog of it’s own.

    AND! If you’d like to win a copy of your very own, then leave me a comment and let me know your funniest/stupidest/worst parenting moment. The winner will be selected via Random.org.

    Annnd, the winner is!

    Kim! I’ll email you Kim.

  • Spring Gardening

    It’s Spring finally and I can begin to plant all the things I’ve been waiting all winter for. I love gardening. There is something about playing in the food I am growing that gives me some peace and helps when I’m feeling panicky. If all else fails, I go and get my hands dirty.

    Some things have been growing all winter and are now waist high, leaving me wondering if I’ve got room to dry strings of broad beans for winter.

    This is about 1/8th of the beans I’ve got growing. Amy *might* have accidentally dropped 200 bean seeds into a freshly dug patch of garden and picking them up was too hard, so I just dug them in. This is what happens when you’re a lazy gardener.

    So I have a metric shitload of broad beans growing and I am really not a fan of them. Although I can imagine drying them and adding them to casseroles and soups next winter will be fantastic. Dear family, be prepared to have loads of beans shared with you.

    I’ve also got growing my standard things – kale (two types, russian and tuscan), lettuce greens, celery, beetroot, leeks, spring onions, garlic, cauliflower, radishes, capsicum, potatoes, parsley, chives, silverbeet, rainbow chard, strawberries and peas.

    Planted but not yet sprouting I have carrots and beans (4 different types) and some sugar snap peas. Plus coriander, basil and mint.

    We moved the A-frame that had been used for pulling out car engines by our houses previous owner into the garden too. I’m hanging my herb baskets on it in the hope that sunlight convinces something other than cress to grow. These baskets hold the aforementioned mint, basil and coriander.

    The a-frame also gives me something to run our soaker hose over. Soon I’ll be planting strawberries in hanging baskets too and hoping it works. The plan is also to grow climbing beans up the frame, to hopefully make the frame part of the garden.

    I went seed shopping yesterday which always makes me happy. I came home with purple runner beans, cucumber (2 types) zucchini, rockmelon (2 types, an experiment), corn and kohl rabi (another experiment).

    I’m starting to wonder if maybe I need a larger garden – because I still have to plant enough tomatoes to make sauces with and I want to plant another 20 pea plants so I can freeze or dry some peas for winter.

    It’s all very demanding and amazingly relaxing, especially when my social anxiety is playing up. Bring on the gardening. Just please, let’s not hide any snakes in there.

    Unrelated: New theme! I bought Thesis, so I’ll probably have a play with the colours and stuff soonish. My brother’s girlfriend is drawing me a header in black and white, so I’ll have a graphic to pop up soon too. Until then, thoughts on colours, sidebar arrangements, things you’d like to see more of? Or we can talk about gardens and Spring.