i guess i'm thinking of having a hysterectomy. i mean i can't imagine 15-20 more years of calling the doctor every month to only end up talking to her nurse who seems to be more in love with detective work than listening to what i'm saying on the phone. example:me: so for 3 days when the pain really gets bad i take xyz and then when the pain gets to the point that i'm ready to pull out my own uterus i take xyz+ for 3 days

nurse: wait, so now you are saying that the pain lasts six days sometimes versus five days? what? is your period that irregular?ok, so imagine that the "six days versus five days" is being spoken as if the nurse was saying "600 days versus five days" and then you'd have the voice down about right. that irregular...yeah, wow, 1 day is just amazingly irregular. how could anyone be that irregular?

christ. because i have migraines and because they act like they are pre-strokes (slurred speech, blindness in one eye, weakness on the right half of my body, tingling on the right side of my face) when i'm on any kind of hormonal treatment like the pill...and because of the depression, etc, which increases to sylvia plath levels when i take any kind of hormonal treatment like the pill...i can't take the pill without it being as risky as playing daily games of russian roulette. but, yet, somehow it always gets mentioned to me as if i'd been living under a rock no matter how long i've seen this or that doctor ("say, did you know there's this thing called the birth control pill?").

but now this nurse at carle is now *investigating* this whole matter to see if i'm a drug addict or if i really just use these painkillers for five or six days a month (and she even did the math and it worked out right...well, if you add in the possibility that sometimes my period lasts six versus five days...never mind the pain i'm in the week before where i'm taking advil as if it were candy). does this come as a surprise to me, that she's launching an investigation, calling me back every ten minutes to get more information? why doesn't she just outright ask me? do i use heroin the other 22 or 23 days of my cycle? there i go again with the irregular bit!

no, it doesn't come to a surprise because this happens every month with more regularity than my amazingly irregular cycle. does the ob-gyn nursing staff at carle get this week's "i hope you cry when you get home" award? yeah, sure, i guess. i guess they get the award one week out of every month...maybe i should just put them in their own category since it's not fair that they get the award so often. others deserve a chance to win, after all! so i guess i'm going to officially announce that carle hospital's ob-gyn department gets the lifetime achievement "i hope you cry when you get home" award. and if they aren't involved in a particular month (say, for instance, if i'm at home over break and my mother's ob-gyn is giving me the same grief) then you can insert "or other ob-gyn departments as needed" in for carle when appropriate.

what i want to know is who they think they are protecting? me? no, because all they are doing is making me wonder if it's easier to deal with a street dealer than them. and then the thing with the hormonal treatments...would they take them if they were me knowing that there's a huge risk that i might have a stroke one month? thanks but i know plenty of people who are my age who have already had strokes and i'm not willing to take a chance that someone might be around to call an ambulance in time to help avoid increased damage to my system and/or death.

yeah, i know. pain killers are not baby aspirin. but i shouldn't have to choose between something hormonal that could kill me or having a hysterectomy because month after fucking month i have to go through hell and back again just to get something prescribed that will allow me to get through five OR six days with some kind of dignity.

oh. and i hear rush limbaugh was caught with a prescription for big blue in his doctor's name and what exactly happened with his whole getting tons and tons of vicodin without a prescription thing?

coda: no more prescriptions, says carle. so i guess i'll be working one less week each month, which should make things easy on the wallet. oh -- and the nurse said that i should try hormonal treatments because taking pain killers are dangerous. kind of like a stroke. or suicidal depression. i need to look at my schedule and go to amsterdam for those five or six days one month...it's worth a shot. and i'm all out of options sans the hysterectomy.