OW, My Arm! And...The World is So Small

Again, for those who might need to have a chicken pox vaccine, I relay my experience thus far:

So I didn't fair so well the first week or so after, like I'd been hit with the flu stick. Then came the sinus headache that I contained with my usual ibuprophen + pseudrophedrine hydrochloride (I do not make enough money to buy the brand names, currently). Little did I know that the ibuprpophen was doing double duty!

About day 10, you know, also known as "The Day of the Lesions" (if they were to show, that is), I rolled over to get out of bed and OH DEAR LORD IN HEAVEN, what sin am I being punished for now, because my left arm HURT. It seriously felt like something had taken a bite out of the "wing" that I'm developing back there (a whole 'nother blog post entirely). There was what looked like a red circular burn-welt just about where the PIT (pharmacist in training) had jabbed me...

But it was early...before coffee....so I did not immediately put two and two together, oh no, first I ran over to Andy and was all, "Did you do this? Do you remember me smacking the back of my arm last night? Do we have spiders?!?!"

And my arm got worse and worse as the day went on, with the little circular welt swelling quite nicely into a big fat arm feeling...every time I flexed my wanna-be girl muscle, or even, you know, just bent my arm, I could feel the skin stretching back there as it hadn't since the aforementioned "wing" appearance. (Seriously, NOT the best gift my body could have given me for my 36th birthday, no way, no how, wings? Where did those free weights go?)

Anywho...I think it finally hit me the next morning, after tenderly exploring the area, that there was a definite BIG OWIE feel right where I'd gotten stabbed with virus 10 days previously. But dude! 10 days! I went to the pharmacy (it's across the street from my work) just to verify that I wasn't going to die from an ever increasing swelling that stemmed from my arm.

Nope, that's just what fat does when it's "fighting back." Um, what? Yep, peoples, I was informed that, you know how hard it is to lose weight? It's because fat is much stronger than we give it credit for. Hello! It is currently fighting off a chicken pox vaccine! Most likely by swallowing it up and making it into a pocket of nasty!

Because I dunno if you've ever lost a ton of weight as you crossed half the Pacific Ocean on a 32' sailboat, but when I did? I was sick ALL THE TIME, to the point where I begged a doctor friend (I know! Me? Voluntarily go to a doctor for advice?!?) to help me figure out if I was allergic to the Island or something! Oh no, he said noting I was about 50 lbs lighter than he'd last seen me on the mainland, I was basically suffering from every cold that my body, or rather, the fat in my body, had fought off by, um, surrounding it and sealing it up in the fat cells. (i.e. SWALLOWING it up...tasty sounding, I know.)

Yeah, I left thinking that maybe doc had had too much pau hana on the brain (we were in Hawai'i, it may have been Friday....) but here was a Seattle-based Pharmacist (not in training) telling me the same thing, sort of. This is why we get all sicky feeling when we're losing weight, yeah, there is the lack of food and fun stuff, but um, also as the cells are giving up the ghost? They are giving up the nasties that they stored inside them.

This insight does not make me happy as I am almost (not quite, maybe next month) determined to start losing the weight my last two incapacitating bike accidents have piled on...especially since I can finally walk a mile without my hip hating me for a week (or seven). It's hard enough for me to say, g'bye 15# of love and comfort, g'bye an extra 5 that snuck on when I wasn't looking (ice cream, I'm looking in your direction)....but now I might be reliving some of the uber nasty Hilo and Tahoe colds and flus I thought I'd seen the last of?

And worse yet, I'll be showing these viruses to a whole new set of people who may have never left their home state. Ah the human body and it's more bizarre aspects...sure does give a whole new concept to the small world aspect of the universe.