Remember how I have a gross and probably not all that entertaining habit of talking about my huge pimples? That's happening again. I have a doozy of a mutant of a pimple. I like to think it's seasons (allergies leading to pimples??) but really I'm the bad patient who uses something and then it works super well so I slowly taper off use. With no doctor's orders. In other words, I will likely die from not completing a course of antibiotics at some point. So yeah, the dermatologist ordered me to keep using my acne meds (I'm 31 and my face is worse now than it was at 16).

As a side note to that, I might have a staph infection in my nose.

If I were you I wouldn't look at or touch my face.

loml's post

I just asked loml what I should write about and he said:

1. how you feel fat
2. women's empowerment

That seems like a weird pairing except those were two of our main topics of conversation today. 

Fat: As I was sitting on the toilet today (I know you want this mental picture) I realized that my pleasantly rounded belly was now more of a roll. And my chin fat, second chin, waddle, whatever your term of choice, is really much bigger than ever before. Because I am much bigger than ever before. I don't like not liking myself, but I just feel heavy. Not even heavy as in fat, heavy as in, I feel like a walking exhausted ball of lead. So I have to do something about this. I don't want to buy new pants again (since I've already bought bigger pants twice in the past year). Time to eat less and get moving.

Empowerment: loml for a while today was obsessed with Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook. And linked me to this article which includes her TED talk and a short article about how the author was inspired by that talk. My reaction was something like "what if my foot has never been on the gas pedal?". Because to be honest, I'm not all that ambitious or motivated. I like my job, I like doing a good job, I wouldn't mind finding other ways to do my job well in other avenues. But I don't plan on ever being a COO. I don't even know if I want to be a manager someday. I've been on cruise control since I graduated college, why would now be any different? But I do think Sheryl has some fantastic points. The TED talk is definitely worth your time, so wander on over there (they fix the sound a few minutes in).

This post is about my lady parts, detailed tidbits, so consider yourself warned.  

I shouted an expletive at the doctor's office today.  It slipped out with a couple of ouches and noises of pain.  Because today I got an IUD.  There's a devilish part of me that wants to put a medical drawing here of an IUD in a uterus, but I'll restrain myself.  The copper paragard T is in my womb.

And let me just say that it was painful.  And my body was confused afterwards (still is).  So here's the run down.  If you don't want details, stop reading.

Basically it was 4 stages of painfulness.  I'm on the table, speculum'd up.  I get cleaned out with iodine.  She warns me that my cervix is closed tight.  So, in order to dilate it, she pokes it.  That's right.  She poked it.  Didn't feel all that great, but it didn't necessarily hurt.  That's level 1 pain there.  Then she clamps something on to it (I believe her explanation was "I'm going to clamp something now".)  I don't know why.  Maybe she needed to keep it open.  I forgot to clarify at that point.  The clamping burned a little, so pain level 2.  Not the worst, though my doc, at this point, was astounded that I didn't even flinch.  Then she needed to measure my uterus to get the IUD sized correctly.  And this my friends, is what I'll call pain level 4.  I guess I wasn't expecting the pain, but I did say (in a very low shout voice) "oh shit ow ow ow ow" as it was happening.  It felt like the end of the world in my womb.  Like she was stabbing it with a knife.  Incidentally, my uterus is size 7cm.  Pain level 3 happened with the actual insertion of the IUD, which she claims should have hurt the worst.  Maybe I was ready for it at that point, but while it hurt a lot, I grimaced and breathed evenly and didn't feel the need to shout.

The immediate aftermath was intense.  I think my body went into a mild version of shock (maybe the surprising level of pain did it) so I started shaking, I got insanely hot and I felt like I might puke all over.  I also felt a little off-kilter.  Some of those things lasted only 10 minutes.  Some came with me on the train home.

Right now I'm having waves of weirdness.  I just feel like there's something off in the lady parts.  For chunks of time it's hard to get comfortable.  Sometimes I feel completely fine and just feel a bit full in that area, like a normal menstrual thing.  I'm having some cramping off and on too, though it's not nearly as bad as some of my worst period cramps.

I went with an IUD, and specifically with the copper one, because I just got really tired of the hormonal side effects of the pill.  I tried switching pills to see if maybe that would help, but then it's just a new handful of side effects.  I'm super hopeful that this is going to be easy, crazy effective birth control.  Something I never have to think about.  From everything I've read, it sounds like the first six months can be interesting.  So I plan on sharing here.  Part of the reason I started researching IUD's is because of Lena Chen's experience, so I feel like I should behave in kind and write about mine.  Only with more gory details.

This doesn't fit here at all, but the deck is going up and it's going to be awesome.  Getting rid of the janky enclosed porch was definitely the right decision.