Eww, Ow, and Holy Crap

This past week has been a hard one, physically.

A week ago, I made the mistake of eating a grilled cheese sandwich with a glass of chocolate milk. Am I pregnant or what?

Anyway, the "mistake" part comes from the fact that I have certain food "sensitivities" which make my intestines react to the combination of certain foods, particularly those containing a lot of dairy products. At the time, it didn't occur to me at all until I found myself in the bathroom vomiting like I haven't done since I was five, and then enduring one of the most painful sessions of diarrhea I've ever known. Having endured many cases of grumpy intestines, that's saying a lot. This is the first time it's actually made me throw up.

The next day, I took a spill in the Chili's parking lot while trying to run shoeless to a car in a torrential downpour. Again, my fault. But it sounded like a good idea at the time. It sounded like less of a good idea when I found myself on the ground in a river of water with a banged-up ankle. The jury is still out on how I managed to scrape up the top of my ankle (and only the top of my ankle) while falling on my butt.

Yesterday, I went to the doctor with abdominal pressure, cramping, and lower back pain. After checking me for signs of preterm labor, the doctor determined that I have a bladder infection and gave me a prescription for antibiotics.

While filling the prescription, I decided - since infection in general can be bad for babies - that it couldn't hurt to pick up some Neosporin and band-aids for the ankle wound I had received in the parking lot several days before.

It hurt.

The wound, which I had been washing daily with antibacterial soap, had previously been only slightly swollen around the red area, but had scabbed over and been little more than an inconvenience on the road to recovery. The only real soreness came from the skin pulling on the new scab when I flexed my ankle.

Within four hours of taking my antibiotics and applying the Neosporin, my foot had swelled to the size of a water buffalo and was too painful to walk on. What had been a typical brown scab became yellow and pus-looking, and the redness had spread to a much larger area.

My bladder infection also picked this time to swing into a full-blown, too-painful-to-stand-up-straight, can't-find-a-position-that-doesn't-hurt problem.

Today, I am doing the John Merrick hobble around the house trying to find a position to sit or lay in that doesn't instill misery. Being seven months pregnant, I only have about 3 positions to choose from, and have found each to be more uncomfortable than the other two.

Having never had a bladder infection before, I'm not sure what they're normally like. But I can tell you that having one with a 3-lb baby sitting on top of it is comparable to having a very tempermental porcupine residing in my abdomen.

Here's hoping the antibiotics kick in, like, yesterday. And it will be a very long time before I drink another glass of cranberry juice.