Operation Pink Herring

The One Side

I'm participating in -R-'s Blog Share today. The post below was written by an anonymous blogger and does not have one single mention of boobs or yeast infections thereof.

For a full list of the blogs participating in the Blog Share, check out -R-'s list.

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The One Side:

We used to be friends. We used to talk about everything, made plans to explore our city, went out to dinner, spent weekends and empty weeknights together. We chatted through the day, had similar taste in style and books and travel dreams. Not too long ago, we were practically inseparable. Then there was this really unforgivable thing, things were said that hurt my feelings and I felt they were completely on purpose. I cancelled plans because I didn't want to be hurt again and at the back of my mind I knew that hanging out again would definitely result in my being hurt. I kept myself busy with a couple of big projects, and any time I got stuck in that awkward "what happened to us!?" conversation I blamed my business for my distance. When I starting receiving emails asking the same thing, I continued to blame my schedule and lack of time or energy. I don't know how long it will take before the hint is FINALLY taken! I don't want a friendship. I don't want to talk about it. I just want you to go away!

Only, you don't go away. I still see you all the time and now it is starting to really bother me. I think if I just ignore you it will be better.

After months of clipped conversations, a lack of even elementary friendliness, and my leaving you off invitation lists you still don't seem to get it. You are just so annoyingly persistent in this whole "why can't we be friends" thing. Get it through your head: I. Don't. Want. To. Be. Friends. Ugh. Seriously.

And Then The Other Side:

We used to be friends. We used to talk about everything, made plans to explore our city, went out to dinner, spent weekends and empty weeknights together. We chatted through the day, had similar taste in style and books and travel dreams. Not too long ago, we were practically inseparable. Then I must have done or said something that left feelings terribly hurt and irreparably bruised, and suddenly all that changed. Instead of a friendly attitude, I was met with dismissal and indifference. Instead of making plans I was left out and ignored. I initiated several conversations and sent several emails asking if there was something I had done to cause the change, to see if there was any way I could apologize and make amends. This relationship was a very important one and I hoped that something as silly as an off-handed comment or cranky week was not going to reduce it to nothing. While I was reassured that it was "nothing" and "it's not you, it's me", months went by and things only got worse, more distant, more gossiping behind my back, blatant ignoring and even a bit of what I felt to be pointed, public criticism.

At first I was heartbroken, then I was upset, now I am indifferent. Apparently, it takes me about 10 months to get over a relationship that did not have any closure for me.

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The One Side:

In most blog circles where I hang out--the type of circles that spill over into Real Life and now my blogger friends are some of my best friends and cohorts--I am known for This One Thing. I do The Thing all the time, it's talked about, laughed about, photographed, shared, etc. I could easily introduce myself as "Hi, I'm Blogger, I do The Thing." A few weeks ago another blogger shared a post that mocked The Thing. I was pretty offended, I thought she was being passive-aggressive and deliberately sharing this post to hurt my feelings. But, instead of letting it fester, I emailed her and asked her what had possessed her to share this particular post and how I felt it was a direct attack.

Her response surprised me a little, apparently I had thought that everyone knew about me and The Thing. Turns out, she had no idea. She apologized profusely, told me she had no intention of hurting my feelings and really had never connected me or my use of The Thing to this shared post that openly and blatantly mocked it.

And Then The Other Side:

A few weeks ago a snarky and sarcastic friend of mine posted about how much he hated The Thing. He went to great length to detail the history of The Thing, which he made up in hilarious fashion. I couldn't stop laughing. I immediately shared the post (before Google Reader became Google Plus and sharing things became a hassle) and went on with my day.  Later that evening I received an email from one of the most lovely bloggers I know, she was hurt and sounded offended that I had so passive-aggressively attacked her and her ubiquitous use of The Thing. I was shocked. I had never associated her with The Thing. I stay out of most of the big blogger circles, I don't go to conferences or participate in monthly blogosphere challenges and projects, I just read blogs and try to improve my own storytelling when I write. I was shocked that my sharing of what I thought was a harmless--if a bit snarky--post would incite a few giggles and nothing more. If I had ever associated this blogger with The Thing that was being mocked I would never ever have shared it. I immediately responded with an apology, I assured this blogger that I had no intention of mocking her, that I, in fact, had no idea she and The Thing were linked in bloggerdom. I appreciated her telling me where I had tromped on her toes and giving me the chance to apologize for it and make it right.

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Now, I am one half of both of those stories, and not necessarily always the better half. In writing out these two, different stories I have realized some things about myself and will be making steps to correct any bad behavior on my part. I'm not talking about "bad behavior" like throwing spit wads on the ceiling or spreading rumors or never tipping my waitress. I'm talking about perpetrating the exact passive-aggressive behavior that drives me batty. If I feel like I can complain about passive-aggressive behavior and festering of emotions, then I need to make damn sure that I am not also acting passive-aggressively on festering emotions. Touche, self, touche.

Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose (to thrush)

What's that? You'd like to hear more about my boobs? WELL YOU'RE IN LUCK! Because I kinda don't have much else going on.

Thrush. Still have it. It is not so painful that I can't breastfeed anymore at least. Oh, it still hurts plenty, but that's not the worst part. The worst part is the boiling of everything that touches my boobs or Hannah's mouth every single time we use them. For twenty minutes. Pacifiers. Bottles. Pump parts. Since I am still feeding every two hours or so and then pumping after each feeding, I pretty much have a witch's brew of plastic boob accessories boiling away on the stove at all times. 

Oh, and then there is the laundry. Because this thrush yeast loves to grow just about anywhere, we're only supposed to be using towels once before washing them. I don't know about you, but normally we are not single use towel people. More like... well, never you mind how often we wash our towels, alright? Because we're MORE than making up for our slovenly ways now. Shower towels, hand towels, dish towels, little hooded frog-shaped baby towels: YOU ARE ALL CONTAMINATED. Also dirty after a single use? Bras. Shirts. Pajamas. Baby blankets. Anything that comes near my boobs or Hannah's face, IN THE WASH. And, friends, that is a lot of wash.

At least we're saving a few loads of laundry a week by not using cloth diapers for a while. You can't use regular diaper cream with cloth diapers and I have no idea if this special thrush diaper cream is cloth-compatible, but I'm guessing not. And I will be damned before I let thrush ruin my preshus Fuzzibunz.

I miss you guys, too. Don't be sad. Someday we'll be together again.

No, thrush, you've already ruined my dignity and my sanity and you will NOT have my cloth diaper collection. So we're in disposables for the time being, and oh, how I hate them. The cheapo Target ones have this chemical stink and the fancy Pampers with the color-changing wetness indicator line cost twice as much. And given my daughter's love of peeing mid-diaper change, making our average diaper's on-butt time about thirty seconds, we are trucking through packs of diapers like nobody's business. If I'd known it was going to be this long I would have gone and bought a pallet of diapers at Costco at the very beginning, but NO, I assumed we'd get treated and get better and that would be that and I didn't want to be stuck with all those extra diapers hanging around the house! I should probably go out and buy a pallet tomorrow, but I still have myself convinced that NOW we are on the brink of a breakthrough and surely another forty pack will see us through to the end of this disaster. I mean, forty diapers! That's got to last at least a month, right? (Answer: not quite.)

When we last left off, I had pried a prescription (diflucan) from my OB's unwilling hands and Hannah had her own medication (nystatin) from the pediatrician, both in oral form and diaper rash cream. I had also bought a shitload of probiotics from both Whole Foods and Amazon when it looked like the diflucan wasn't going to come through. Between the probiotics, the diflucan, and the nystatin, we were well on our way to victory. Two days after starting this multi-front assault I felt SO much better. It really was thrush! And we were really going to survive! Much celebration ensued. 

And then I got worse again. Thrush was like, oh HELL no, and stepped up the game. I got to the end of my diflucan bottle after a week and was still having shooting pain in my boobs whenever they got full. I finagled a refill out of my doctor's office, except they screwed up the dosage and I didn't realize it until after I'd already filled the prescription. So they had to give me ANOTHER prescription and now I have enough diflucan to cook up a REAL good batch of yeast infection meth. Meet me out back by the trailer if ya want some!

In the meantime, I decided to try gentian voilet. Because I like to leave no hippie home-remedy stone unturned. Plus, the internet swore that this dye was actually much more effective than nystatin because it kills the yeast on contact and penetrates mucous membranes and yadda yadda yadda. So what if it stains everything it comes in contact with bright purple, as long as it works!

Except for the part where it didn't actually work. But it sure was fun when Henry the Cat stepped in some and tracked it all over the kitchen!

The bright side, though, and I am telling myself that there is one because I just can't afford not to at this point, is that my supply issues disappeared the minute that I found out I couldn't store any milk. Thrush doesn't die in the freezer. Because why would it? That would just be too easy. So you can't bank up any milk while you're infected or you'll just get reinfected later on when you use that milk. My boobs heard that and were like HEY DID SOMEONE HERE ORDER SOME MILK HERE U GO.

Can you tell which bottle came from the days we were using the gentian voilet? Hint: it's the purple one in the middle.

I am not sure where we go from here, but I am not giving up. This is personal now, and I will not lose. I will fill the bathtub with boiling water and submerge my entire body for twenty minutes if I have to. I will wear the scratchy paper nursing pads and buy disposable diapers forty at a time and wash every towel in the house after a single use like this is the Lady MacBeth Goddamn Hotel. The forty-seven episodes of Friday Night Lights I've watched on Netflix Instant have me feeling a little bit competitive.

Thrush this

Wow. So. This entry somehow turned into an insanely long missive on... my boobs. And yeast infections in said boobs. Yes. Yum. Ever heard of thrush? I hadn't either, but let me tell you something: I now know more about getting rid of thrush than I do about killing tapeworms. Oh, you weren't planning on eating today, were you? Because guess what, my pregnancy carpal tunnel syndrome has finally cleared up and I can type again and I have many, many words for you. All of them about boob infections.

I was terrified of breastfeeding before the baby was born. (Is it weird that I still call her "the baby"? Someone on Facebook asked me jokingly -- at least I think she was joking -- if she didn't have a name. I guess that after nine months of not knowing whether Hannah was going to be a girl or a boy, "the baby" has just sort of stuck.) I heard other people talk about how hard it was and I wasn't exactly sure why it was so difficult, but then we took a breastfeeding class at the hospital and it was only slightly less terrifying than the childbirth class that landed Joel in the ER.  But when we took a breastfeeding class at the hospital and they showed pictures of a proper latch that looked like this:

(Source)

That looks... uncomfortable. Right? I was not looking forward to the whole operation.

But then Hannah was born and forty five minutes later I was shoving my boob in her mouth in a sleep-deprived haze. To my amazement, it really didn't hurt. I was completely unconvinced that there was anything actually coming out of my boobs because that still seemed kind of insane (I also couldn't believe that I'd just had a baby, despite the fact that I was holding said baby on my chest). In the days that followed, breastfeeding was hard because it was time consuming and somewhat uncomfortable and Hannah wanted to eat all. the. damn. time (turns out babies do that), and no one else could help even a little. Several times Joel asked what he could do to help me with the baby and I answered "grow a pair of boobs and feed this baby for me." But Hannah gained plenty of weight and overall the experience wasn't terrible, as I'd been expecting. I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

And then around the three week mark I started to get sore. By four weeks I was REALLY sore. I decided to break out the hand-me-down pump my coworker had given me and start pumping a little bit to give myself a break from nursing all the time. That helped a little on the weekends. But during the week, you can't exactly tell a hungry baby to just hang on for half an hour while you pump, wash the pump parts, and get a bottle ready. I had hoped I could bank up a little reserve and be able to feed her a bottle and then replace it right away by pumping again afterwards, but HAHAH NO. It doesn't quite work that way. No matter how much I pumped I could just not get ahead of her. She ate everything I pumped and demanded more. Sometimes I ended up pumping and then nursing her afterwards, which defeated any sort of purpose. I tried pumping more often. Every two hours on the dot I'd pump and get such measly amounts that I felt like the whole thing was a waste of time. It took me an entire week of furious pumping to save up three ounces so I could go to yoga one time. And when I got home from that class she was screaming and starving. It was horribly frustrating.

More time went on and I stopped being sore and started being in serious pain. It got to the point where I dreaded nursing. I'd feel angry when Hannah wanted to eat again ninety minutes after her last feeding, like OH MY GOD YOU JUST ATE. In my head I knew that newborns are supposed to cluster feed and this was good and normal. My boobs told my head to shut the hell up because they were tired and just wanted a goddamn break for two minutes. I winced and had to catch my breath every time she latched on. I hated feeding her. I made her stop eating when I just couldn't take any more, rather than when she was full. Hannah cried for hours every night and I wondered if she was hungry or if she was just crying because babies cry.

By the time she was six weeks old, I could not bear the thought of nursing her directly. I vowed that I would not directly breastfeed her the entire weekend, that I would pump like crazy and feed her bottles the entire weekend. Hopefully by the time Monday rolled around my boobs would have recovered sufficiently to get a fresh start.

Yeah, no. Even pumping hurt pretty bad. And no matter how often and for how long I pumped, Hannah wanted more. More, more, more. She cried for hours and hours at night and the only thing that shut her up was a bottle or a boob. She can't possibly STILL be hungry, we told each other. There is no more food to give her. I felt so anxious that I was sick to my stomach. My baby was crying and I couldn't feed her. No matter how much I pumped and fed her, it wasn't going to be enough.

Finally, I decided to call the lactation consultant at the hospital. She listened to my symptoms (we had a few great weeks of nursing and now it feels like someone is drawing a razorblade across my skin when my baby nurses, don't mind if I just cry a little on the phone here) and her first suggestion: I think you might have thrush.

I had no idea what thrush was. I had pretty much convinced myself that this was just how breastfeeding was, and this was why everyone said it was hard. She assured me that so much pain, especially after three pain-free weeks was very much not normal and told me to call the pediatrician's office and request prescriptions for both Hannah and me, emphasizing how important it was for us to both be treated simultaneously. And that is how I found myself having this conversation with the scheduler at our pediatrician office:

Scheduler: You'd like to make an appointment for... thrash?

Me: No, thrush. With a "u". T-H-R-U-S-H.

Scheduler: I'm sorry, did you say "thrush"?

Me: Yes, thrush.

Scheduler: I... don't know what that is.

Me: It's a yeast infection. In your nipple.

The pediatrician couldn't get us in (unsurprising, as it was a Friday afternoon), but after hearing the symptoms -- which I got to describe in embarrassing detail to the male scheduler, she was happy to call the prescription for Hannah into the pharmacy without seeing her. I'd have to call my own OB, though, for my own prescription.

Frantically, I called the OB's office, which was closing in half an hour. I got their answering machine and left a message with all the details, hoping they'd get it and call it in before everyone left for the day. I called again five minutes before they closed and left a slightly more desperate message about how I wasn't trying ot be annoying but I was in a lot of pain and I really couldn't wait until Monday and no I'm not crying YOU'RE CRYING. And then I cried because I knew they'd already closed up shop for the weekend and I was stuck until Monday.

BUT! THEN! The receptionist called me back, fifteen minutes after closing time. I explained the situation again to that scheduler (who either knew exactly what thrush was or didn't care enough to ask) and she said she'd pass the message along to the doctor and they'd call my prescription in to the pharmacy. I felt the weight lift from my chest for the first time days. It felt like there might actually be a solution to this problem. It's hard for me to convey the level of anxiety that I was feeling over feeding the baby, but it was all-consuming. It's a strange and heavy responsibility to be solely charged with sustaining another human being. It's amazing and it's stifling at the same time when it's going well. When it's not going well... it's horrible. I felt like my body was refusing to function correctly, like I was failing at my most basic and important responsibility. And I felt completely helpless. And I felt like it was never going to get better.  

So obviously I handled it very well when the OB nurse called me back and informed me that they didn't treat mothers for thrush. Just treat the baby, she said. I explained that the baby wasn't even having any symptoms but I was in an incredible amount of pain and I didn't see how treating her was going to help that. Plus, the pediatrician and the lactation consultant (along with every reputable source on the internet) had both emphasized that it was imperative that Hannah and I be treated simultaneously. "Yeah, that's what pediatricians and lactation consultants think," she said. That's a direct quote. Like I was telling her the opinions of my psychic adviser and my cat, not a well-regarded fellow physician and the lactation consultant at HER OWN HOSPITAL. I argued with her for a few minutes and got nowhere.

I hung up the phone and cried. I cried a lot. At the time all I could see was an interminable weekend stretching before me, filled with pain and hours of hungry babies wailing and staring longingly at the unopened tin of formula. (Let me pause to say what should be unnecessary, but in this world od mommy guilt and breastfeeding nazis is not: i have nothing against formula. I was exclusively formula fed and I think I turned out OK. My reluctance to dive into that tin of formula is because I have worked so hard to build up my milk supply and I knew that if I had an alternative to the incredibly painful nursing and pumping, it would just be too easy to give up breastfeeding altogether.) I was convinced that I had thrush and was going to have it forever because the stupid doctor wouldn't treat me. At the same time, I was convinced it wad not thrush and this was just how breastfeeding wad going to be forever. Both possibilities were utter doomsday scenarios, because that's what a chronic lack of sleep does to me.

So I did the logical thing and sent a series of increasingly desperate text messages to my friend Sarah, who is a doctor. Beware, all ye considering medical school, for it shall doom you to a lifetime of hypochondriac friends asking for medical advice about their possibly infected boobs. And tapeworms.  Because OH YES I was convinced I had caught that tapeworm from my goddamn dirty cats rubbing their goddamn dirty butts on my pillows and desperate times call for desperate measures. However, I did NOT text her a picture of my poor, sore nipples. Which is what Joel thought I did. God, even I have standards. And also I couldn't figure out how to get a good picture because my phone camera sucks.

I spent the entire weekend feeling sick to my stomach. I resolved that I would only pump again and not nurse at all, and it was horrible. Every two hours I'd sit upstairs with my stupid pump and eek out a few measly ounces. And by "a few", I mean "one". Maybe one and half. Which was about half of what Hannah would have liked to eat. I left a tearful message for the lactation consultant on Saturday night, hoping she worked on the weekends. She did not.

On Monday morning I called the pediatrician's office first thing in the morning and made an appointment to bring Hannah in that afternoon, hoping that I could convince her to write me my prescriptions as well. An hour after I made that appointment, the lactation consultant called me back. She offered to call my OB's office for me and speak to a doctor in the practice that had worked with her on thrush before. An hour after that, I had my prescription.

The whole experience has been absolutely maddening. The lactation consultant told me to call the OB back and ask for another week's refill if my symptoms hadn't completely cleared up within a week. When I did just that, the doctor on duty refused to give me a refill and made me feel like a drug-seeking addict. I mean, if this stuff is supposed to be getting me high, it's doing a crap job. All I want is for it to not feel like someone is hacking my boobs to pieces with a rusty razor when my baby nurses, and this lady is making it seem like I'm cooking up some sort of yeast infection breastfeeding meth in my trailer. 

The moral of this story is that I'm getting really tired of typing, thrush is a fantastic pain in the ass, and from now on I am only seeing the one doctor in my OB practice that I saw today, the one who apologized that I'd had to come all the way into the office with a baby in tow to get a refill that could have been done over the phone and wrote me a prescription without making me feel like a crack addict. The end.