Ilaya Street

So, after the Sudafed dilemma and finally deciding to take the med and Kevin staying home last Thursday, I felt good the whole day. The pressure was still there but the headache was manageable. I made an appointment to see the doctor and luckily, they were able to get me in the same day (11 am!). And luckily, too, it wasn’t my PCP because I was really planning to bitch at her. So, the doctor took a good look, said that it wasn’t bacterial, not the flu or common cold. It’s caused by my allergy (tell me what’s new, doc!). And so he said jsut continue taking sudafed up to a week but no longer than that. Ok..

I don’t want to take pill when Kevin’s not around so I just did the usual nasal steaming, saline drops and a little bit of rest. Same thing, pressure still there, headache manageable. That night, i thought about the crying and how it seemed to have relieved the pressure a bit. We thought of a ways to make me cry and but we ended up laughing instead. Before falling asleep, we made a decision that I would try cutting onions the next morning.

The following day, we found out that we have a lot of things to accomplish before we could head up to LA for Papa’s birthday.  I didn’t take a pill because that’s what we agreed on – if it’s not *that* bad, let’s not take any meds. So, i went ahead and got the biggest onion and started cutting. It wasn’t doing anything! I had the chopped onions all the way up my nose, inhaling it and all but it didn’t do anything! We probably got sweet onions. (i know there’s the sweet variety, but I am not sure if that was the reason why we’re not getting the cry-enzymes).  Kevin said “you should just rub them all over your face!”. I said,  ”Maybe I should just squeeze the juice directly to my eyes! If that worked, we should patent Onion Drops”.  I went through the day “managing” the headache but still functioning.

After using up more than half the day running errands and building stuff, we headed up to my parents for the birthday dinner, headache on board.  We went to Sagan, a korean barbeque/japanese restaurant. Then the Wasabi idea came to mind. I am going to eat wasabi and see how it goes. So, we actually ordered korean bbq and korean dishes so no wasabi was served. We had to ask for it. And so, the moment of truth – nothing ever worked to get to my sinuses. Wasabi should at least do something. All eyes were on me when i took my first bite. It was a piece of galbi with a little bit of wasabi. Nothing. Didn’t even feel anything. I was starting to feel really frustrated and hopeless. But i wasn’t going to give up. I tried again. Quarter teaspoon wasabi – straight up!. 3…2…1.. HOLY CRAP! My nasal passages opened up, i teared up really quickly and felt like it was going to burn forever. I had to spit the wasabi to a napkin. But after a few seconds, the burning sensation was gone (that’s what wasabi does). And believe it or not, that seemed to have done the trick. This morning, I started sneezing again and was able to release some mucus out.  I would prefer sneeze fits over debilitating headaches anytime (although i don’t like sneezing so much because I’m afraid I may be disturbing the little bugger’s nap time or something).

Last Wednesday, I started to feel crappy.  Headache, body ache, toothache and general tiredness. This hit me hard later in the day. Kevin took care of me that night, even learning how to make sopas (filipino style chicken noodle soup) so I could eat. The only medication that I took was tylenol since it’s the only pain reliever on the safe list for pregnant women. It helped a bit and I was able to get some sleep, in a semi-sitting down position.  The next morning, I was feeling a little better so I told him he could go to work. By midday, the headache hit again. I was pretty sure this is sinus congestion but I wasn’t releasing any mucus at all and I could breathe fine. I emailed my midwife and the primary care physician and asked if Sudafed is safe to take at this stage on pregnancy. I also searched online while waiting for their response. The women in my ‘community’ said their OB said that sudafed is safe. One website said that regular sudafed is safe, but not the PE version (which is the OTC version of “regular” sudafed). I finally got replies from my docs and the midwife said YES, it’s safe. The PCP said NO. And so my dilemma began. I wanted to take any decongestant at this point because I was being immobilized by the pain but because of these conflicting information, i decided not to take any. I went to the pharmacy and got a nasal steamer, hoping that it would help loosen the mucus. Didn’t really help. By the end of the day, I was in so much pain that I started crying. I noticed that as I was crying, mucus started coming out of my nose (as what normally happens when people cry) and i was able to blow some out. I think that helped relieved some pressure because my ears popped a little. Kevin found me in a miserable state and he got into action and called the KP hotline. Nurse gave us a list of meds that are OK to take and one of them is sudafed. And i asked which one? The regular or the PE? We asked for the active ingredient but she wasn’t sure. She just said sudafed. From my research, Sudafed PE is phenylephrine HCL and the “regular’ sudafed is pseudoephedrine HCL. You won’t find the regular sudafed OTC. It’s behind the counter and you have to sign for it before you could get it. It’s to track down who’s getting this stuff, because ingredients in this version of sudafed is used to make crystal meth. So i asked kevin to get that kind but mention to the pharmacist that we’re pregnant, so s/he could give another info. She said PE is better because the regular one can make one jittery. From what i read online, PE is a vasoconstrictor and it could constrict the blood vessels going to the placenta. Gaaah!  We decided to take the regular sudafed. He cut it in half! But I took the other half later on…

This morning, I still have a headache but not as bad as yesterday. I got a call from the KP resident midwife and she said that at this stage, ALL OTC meds are safe for me to take. Wow. I hate my doctor.

I think I’m going to take a nap for a while. The Kev’s staying home today to take care of me. maybe i should call in sick.

Im here at panera, “working” and feeling like the flu is going to get me anytime soon. (i got all my flu shots, so this is probably not the flu)…  A couple of  seats in front of me is an old man with a DVD player (or maybe a netbook), enjoying his movie. On his table is a mug, probably the only thing he ordered. He also have a refillable plastic bottle, filled with maybe coffee. And box of cookies. Around him were all these plastic bags and other stuff.  He looks like he hasn’t showered in a while, and his clothes look a little dirty. He stood up and left all his stuff on the table. Maybe he went to the bathroom. When he returned, I looked at him and he looked like Max! Max is the name of the guy around our area who carries a sign like a homeless person, walking staying in the island (?) of the road asking for “help”. I knew his name was Max because it said so on his sign : “my name is max…”

Maybe this guy is not really max. but he looks awfully a lot like Max. so I am going to call him Poser Max.

I really want to go home now and crawl in bed. Really not feeling well. But I can’t yet. The exterminator sprayed poison in our kitchen to get rid of some bugs…   mammmmaaaaa!

The other day, The Kev came just as when I was getting ready to start dancing/play with the Wii Just Dance game that my sister gave HIM for his birthday.  And he said “I wanna play, I wanna play!”.  ok then…

And so we played. YOu just hold the remote on one hand and just copy the dance moves of the character on the screen. Since I love to dance and have some rhythm,  this was easy for me. We were dancing together and we both noticed he was missing a lot and he got frustrated. I tried to help him by offering to swap remotes (we both knew that wasn’t the reason), and I tried to miss some of the moves when I was getting way ahead. The poor guy. For this last dance, he decided to do something and he did much better this time. So I praised him. “See, we almost tied!”. Him: “Yeah, coz I only moved my arms and  didn’t move my feet!”. (I knew that!).

A lot of people complain about getting spam mail. We recently moved a client to our mail server and got rid of their hosted exchange server since they mainly need emails coming in and out, no public folders. We saved them some money by doing this. Our mail server is pretty good at filtering SPAM messages. (I rarely get any). You can blacklist/whitelist the items that goes to your SPAM folder or whatever passes through. One of their users have been COMPLAINING that she’s not getting any SPAM or very little spam messages. Are you effin’ kidding me?! You’re wasting my time, *itch!