Goat Suckers, Horse Kissers, and Pig Ticklers AKA Just Another Day in Chronic Illness.

(White-winged Nightjar, Eleothreptus candicans, source)

"What is another name for a Nightjar?" asks the host on the UK quiz show blasting from the wall of the radiology office.

Goat Sucker, Horse Kisser, and Pig Tickler, are the options offered up to the elderly contestant. Her floral dress, spectacles and hair set would not have seen her out of place in an episode of Keeping Up Appearances.

Is a Nightjar where you keep your Night Soil? A look of panic emerged on the face of Hyacinth's neighbour. Apparently not. While visions of old chamber pots ran through my head I learnt that a Nightjar is also known as a Goat Sucker and that none of the options were a euphemism for some sexual contortion. It's a bird if you're interested. No joint poo receptical or Karma Sutra involved. Too much time in gastroenterology offices means I have poo on the brain. Living with a juvenile husband also means euphemisms pop into my mind by default.

TV in waiting rooms tends to be dull, so a low budget British quiz show, hosted by the guy from Law & Order UK, was welcomed. Although I should add a disclaimer. I was slightly delirious from walking/stumbling ten thousand kilometres to the door of the radiology office, which despite the sign is not near the obvious carpark. Instead it's down a long walkway around a couple of corners and at the back of the building, where there is another hidden carpark. So really, a mind numbingly boring episode of Law TV from one of the infomercial channels may have been deemed exciting by that point. Hell, I may have even enthusiastically paid $5.45 a minute, for a reading from Psychic TV, by the time I finally wheezed that I was there for  my 3:45 ultrasound.

A woman who would not have looked out of place as a screw in an episode of Prisoner, sat at the top of ramp, a series of light panels in front. As she smugly regaled the serfs/contestants below with her knowledge of monotremes and spiny anteaters, I mumble that she shouldn't be so smug if she doesn't mention they are actually known as echidnas. But she can't hear me, and the woman two seats down who can, looks like she'd rather move further away from the strange wheezing woman talking to the TV.

Tap tap tap. Tap my foot and squirm in my seat while a guy with a magnificent mullet answers another question. Drink one litre of fluids before the scan, she said. Don't pee after two, she said. Damn it's not a mullet after all, just really long hair pulled back at the top. You'll always be Mullet Man to me UK quiz show contestant. Because I need to focus on a non-existent mullet to stop thinking about the litre of water I have consumed to have a full bladder ready to squish and scan.

Tap tap tap. Call me now please or you'll have one litre of water on your ugly brown and black carpet squares.

Governess Merciless. Oh this just gets better. The screw at the top of the ramp is a wrestler. There a mention of red latex. Oh British TV, I think I love you.

Hold the water, even when you're there for abnormally frequent peeing. Hold it in. Hold it in. Luckily I threw up some of the litre so it's not quite so bad. Well from a pee on the carpet perspective, not so much from a watery spew as you hold onto the side of the porcelain at home perspective. But I have topped up since so who knows how much is in there.

Come on people. Scan me. Let me pee or puke. A gross choose your own adventure. It's coming out somewhere. Once upon a time I could drink water without wanting to puke. I could also eat without wanting to puke. And not worry about peeing in a waiting room. Or at least I think so. My memory is pretty hazy these days.

Here we go. Maybe. No? The other guy left. There's only me now. Please hurry. Tap tap tap. Squirm. Rearrange. Wait. Watch Mullet Man and wrestling screw in their battle of wits.

3:45 comes and goes.

Tick tick tick. The clock behind the admin desk measures the increasing sensations in my nether regions with each nerve rending tick. Tick tick tick could become drip drip drip any second.

Wait? What? It's my turn? Okay.

Stumble down the corridor and into the mood lit room. Lie on the table while a stranger rubs KY on my stomach and scans my bladder. He hesitates.

There's only 40mls in there. What? No that's not possible. I drank it all. I feel like I need to go.  I topped up after my spew. Where has it gone? What? I have to drink more? More waiting? Just 40 minutes more. At the sight of my crestfallen face, he repeats the just. Like that makes it better.

Back in the waiting room and more UK quiz show. Less excitement and interest this time as I am handed more cups of water to drink and wait. Wait wait wait. Pull a magazine out of my bag and read.

Kegal, kegal, kegal. Squirm and read. Read and re-read as each pang in my bladder says I need to pee. More water. Wait. Can't concentrate now. Did you know that a decrease in cognitive ability has been recorded in people who really need to pee? People study these things. When you are busting to pee, your brain turns to mush. Add that to pre-existing brainfog, and I may have been the intellectual equivalent of a rock, sitting on the orange chair staring and mouth breathing at the magazine in my lap.

The admin lady is packing up. People are leaving. Come on. Scan me. Scan me. Tap. Tap. Tap. Squirm. Squirm. Squirm. Kegal. Kegal. Kegal.

Finally. 3 hours since I last peed I am scanned again. 80 fricken mls.

My body is the Tardis. And somewhere in the endless interior of my body, is a well of water. Sitting, waiting, refusing to budge. And yet I still need to pee.

I wall walk out to the waiting room once more. The UK quiz show is over. I pay for the pleasure and wait for my disc. Maybe if I asked Governess Merciless to order the water to stop loitering in my stomach, or behind my pancreas, or near my patella, or wherever it's hiding, it would move to my bladder quick smart.

After 3 hours I make my way back down the concrete and wooden corridor to the car, contemplating the fact I can't even get a scan right.

But at least I have learnt something new thanks to Hyacynth Bouquet's neighbour, Mullet Man and Governess Merciless.  Night Jars are Goat Suckers and as Wikipedia tells me Goat Suckers are Chupracabras. And last night I watched an episode of Grimm about Chupracabras. Life comes full circle. And just like that, all that water finally found it's way out at 5am this morning.

Michelle

And because I'm pretty sure my bladder and body are telling me they don't care what I want, I give you Transvision Vamp and Baby I Don't Care (1989).

One of these things is not like the others.

(source)

So 40, hey? Tops right? I'm sure it is. Really I am. My sexual prime is rocking. I feel totally in touch with the womanly wonder that is me. It's epiphanies left right and centre. Glitter is thrown at my feet by kittens riding unicorns, as I stroll with confidence around my lounge room. And choirs of angels are singing about the glory that is my 40-year-old body.

Or.

I could be heading to a diagnostic mammogram tomorrow, because even my boobs are stupidly defunct. Happy 40th, now lets squish your miniature mammaries into pancakes/pikelets/poffertjes.

I actually found the lump before my 40th but just couldn't face another broken body part before I made it out of my 30s. There's a limit to the amount of decrepitude a girl can handle before she clocks over into the big leagues. You see I've been down the lumpy boob route for 10 years now. Had my first biopsy before my 30th birthday and had my first chunk of dodgy boob cut out not long after.

I've even written about my defunct boobage before.

My boob is a garden.
Garden VS Swiss Sheese: Update on "My boob is a garden".

But enough is enough. So I waited until after the big four oh, thinking it'd be nothing yet again. But it's never that simple, is it?

Remember that song from Sesame Street, "one of these things is not like the others"? Story of my life. My boobs, small as they are, may be best described as feeling like a bag of marbles, courtesy of all the cysts and fibroadenomas that rattle around in there. But every now and then, one of those marbles doesn't feel like all the others. This is one of those times.

I swear chronic illness is best defined as being felt up by strangers on a regular basis. This occurred to me Thursday, as I lay topless yet again on the table in the GP clinic. My regular GP was booked out. My back up GP had left the practice unbeknownst to me, which meant I had to risk a new doctor. Normally I'd wait till I could get into my regular GP, but sometimes things crop up and you need to be seen (or in this case before I changed my mind). So once more I found myself agreeing to be groped by another stranger.

I lay down whilst she listed off my collection, "one o'clock right breast", " four and five o'clock", "10 o'clock"..... (Is is wrong that I distract myself be thinking of the Play School Rocket Clock, every time I go through this process?). I sat on the edge of the bed. Arm up. Arm down. Whilst she concentrated on my minuscule mammaries. I sat there like the performing monkey I am. Resigned to that fact that any dignity I had is long since past.

(source)

After much in the way of arm acrobatics and going through my lengthy history, I was told that I need to be scanned.

Normally I just do an ultrasound every 1-2yrs to keep an eye on my collection. The girls are incredibly dense (aka stupid) despite being so tiny, so ultrasound is the way to go. But nope apparently that's not enough this time. Now I have to be squished and have the ultrasound. YAY.

Who even knew there were different types of mammograms? Not me. So we're skipping regular and going for the diagnostic one, because I'm special.

When I rang last week to set up my appointments, it occurred to me that you stand for a mammogram. Which could be kind of problematic given the whole 'standing ends in falling over' issue I have with Dysautonomia. I've had visions of me lying passed out on the floor my aging boobs stretched before me nipples still stuck in the plates of the machine. After pointing my dilemma out to the receptionist they have agreed that I can sit whilst they do the scan or at least in between each one. I am also wondering how they will get my concave breasts onto the plates. Surely they need something to work with?

So tomorrow my best friend is coming with me to my inaugural boob squish. If anyone can make me laugh and take my mind off it all, it's her. She's also not afraid to slap me round and tell me I am over-reacting if the need arises. Because that's what good friends do.

No doubt it'll be nothing and all my worry and stress will be for naught. Which will also shit me as I have little in the way of reserves and my neuroses should be reserved for the stuff that does matter. Wasted energy and wasted grey hairs.

How can something so small be so troublesome?

Michelle

This just seems rather appropriate today.

My Boob Is A Garden

It's been one of those days.  One of those days where you just say "fine", sigh, assume the position, and brace for the pointy end of the pineapple that you know is coming.  Today I was told my boob was a garden.  Yep.  A garden.  How do you respond to that?  I knew they could cause earthquakes, bring men to their knees and fill out a training bra nicely.  But a garden?  No.  That's a new one.

Today was yet another fun scan day.  Not an MRI today, for which I gave praise to every deity known to man.  Today was boob ultrasound day.  YAY. 

 

(photo)

I have bodgy boobs.  I've always had bodgy boobs.  Over the years I have had many a cyst or suspicious fibroadenoma either biopsied or whipped out.   So when I felt something whilst I was doing my daily ablutions I just said meh and kept on scrubbing.  Hence it has taken me a while to get my butt into action.

When you're chronically sick you pick the most pressing problem and forget the rest.  So I may be a year, or five, overdue for my yearly ultrasound.  Oh and haven't my boobs been busy during that time.  They have been fruitful and multiplied, like randy little rabbits.  If nothing else at least I know I don't have lazy boobs.


Fantastically, I had the joy of the student radiologist feeling me up.  Apparently I am a fantastic teaching tool and provided a community service today.  My boobs are both Einstein and Mother Teresa all rolled into one. 

I got to lie there exposed to the world as the radiologist and her learner driver rolled goop all over my petite mammaries.  All the time going "Ooooh", "Ahh", "Look at that", "Wow look at that".  I did get a little miffed when they started to say "Well that one could go either way".  You know, that's not what I want to hear as they are looking at the girls. 

So I found out today that I have multiple abnormalities growing away happily.  Should be a bumper crop in the garden this year.  I also found out I have ectopic boob tissue.  So not only was my uterus not bright enough to keep itself in one place (hence the endometriosis) apparently my boobs are equally inept. 

I have boob tissue growing everywhere from my arm pit to my knee cap.  Okay the later may be an exaggeration, though not by much, and it would explain why my knees are so perky/knobbly.  It's mixed up in my lymph nodes and in my muscle tissue.  Basically my boobs are dumbarses.  As, Mr Grumpy said, "if it's growing everywhere, you'd think at least some of it would grow in the right place".  Ha ha Mr Grumpy.  You are hilarious. 

The experience was also punctuated with me making mad dashes to the loo to throw up and evacuate my nether regions thanks to Bob.  Tops!  Mind you the radiologists did end up putting on their jumpers and turning the aircon on for me so that's a bonus right?  So now more waiting for results.

My body is officially one of the fish that John West rejects.

Pass the tequila.

The gardening Michelle.