So, this morning I learned that the Cyclo...whatever drug that I took twice over the past weekend was not the generic Sudafed. It was a muscle relaxer. Which explains a lot. How did I find this out? Because Jeff decided to read the blog this morning. I was finishing up my packing for Thanksgiving a short while ago and he came in and we had something like the following conversation:
Jeff: So, I just caught up on your blog (with a semi-serious look on his face).
Me: Oh yeah? (Thinking: Oh geez, I must have said something wrong - I knew this whole online thing was a bad idea!)
Jeff: Yeah. So about the Sudafed thing...did you happen to look up the drug that you were taking to make sure it was Sudafed?
Me: No.
Jeff: Well, I did and it was a muscle relaxer - probably the one that they gave you for your back issues earlier this year.
Me: Oh, well how was I supposed to know? You were right there when I was trying to figure out which bottle was the Sudafed. I asked you if you knew...
Jeff: Yes, I vaguely remember, but I think I was preoccupied with making you dinner at the time.
Me: Oh.
Jeff: Well, I can help you figure out the where the actual Sudafed is. Where are the bottles?
Me: Downstairs. Oh...wait...actually, now that I think of it...
At which point I go into the bottom drawer in our bathroom and immediately pull out one bottle of - yep, "Sudogest", generic form of Sudafed. It said so right there on the bottle. Right then I recalled that I had specifically put it in that drawer right next to the emergency supply of real Sudafed so I would know where exactly where it was when I needed it. I guess that didn't work out so well. So, my sincere apologies for anything negative or misleading I may have said in my earlier post. I take it all back.
Now I can go eat my turkey with a clear conscience.
Until I write again.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Just pretend I'm not here
Catalina knows that she is not allowed up on the couch, except when she is on her own blanket. However, last night her mean brother (who even stuck his tongue out at her) stole her blanket so she very sheepishly decided to sneak up and try to snuggle next to me. She refused to look up at me, as if not making eye contact meant that I wouldn't notice that she was somewhere she wasn't supposed to be. It didn't work. 
Until I write again.
Monday, November 24, 2008
I've been away
I've been gone on a little trip over the past few days. In fact, I'm still there but thought I'd check in anyway. This place isn't super fun. In fact, I bet you all have been there before, too. It's a little place I like to call Sickville.
Pre-child, I used to get sick with a cold typically once, maybe twice a year. Nowadays, it just constantly rotates through the house. How it typically works is that Ian picks up something from school, sports class, the grocery store, some museum or some park. Really, anywhere outside of our front door seems to be fair game for him. Then after a week or so he passes it along to Jeff. And then a few days later, I get it. Or, sometimes it's the other way around and I get it first and then Jeff. You know, just to mix things up a bit. And then once we are finally all better, it starts all over again. Of course it's important to note here that the "all better" part of this cycle lasts approximately 1.57 days, if we are lucky.
The thing I find most interesting about this whole thing is that Ian seems to be the person least affected by being sick. I, of course, have to knock on wood here but we have been extremely lucky with him in the whole illness area. His nose can be running like a cheetah (they run fast, don't they?), with coughing and the whole nine yards and he never seems to lose any energy. Just once, I'd like to see him knocked out on the couch for a day. Really, I would - but no such luck. Now, on the flip side, I also consider us very lucky in that this also means we have yet to spend one night up with him being sick. (Insert another very large knock on wood here.)
Now, Jeff and I, on the other hand, appear to get completely wiped out at the first sign of a sniffle. And that's what happened to me last week. I recall it like it was last week. Ian and Jeff had both been congested, but so far it had missed me. Until I arrived home after having dinner with my friend Brianne on Wednesday evening. Just about the second I walked in the door, I went from feeling fine one second to having a slight tickle in the back of my throat. You know the one I'm talking about. It's the feeling you can't quite explain, but you know exactly what it means. An hour later, my throat was consumed with a chalky/dusty feeling. (This is the best way I can describe how mine feels.) The throat thing just lingered for a day or so. And then the aches set in. That's when I knew I was in real trouble.
The highlight of this particular Sickville trip was perhaps at about 4 a.m. on Saturday morning when I was so stuffed up and desperate for relief that I actually found myself in our downstairs hall bathroom (so as not to disturb the sleepers upstairs) with my face shoved in the sink with very hot water in an attempt to let the steam do its magic on my nasal passages. I believe there was a washcloth involved as well but I'm not totally sure because it was early and my eyes were shut. But it didn't work either. By Saturday evening, I knew it was time to get serious and start medicating. Yep, it was time for some Sudafed.
Now, in case you are wondering why I didn't whip out the ole' box of Sudafed days ago, it's because being an Oregonian now, I am Sudafed challenged. You see, I can't just simply walk into a drug store, go up to the counter and sign a little log and walk away with my little red and white box of the good stuff. No sirree. I have to get a prescription for it. This is a state law that took effect shortly before we moved here due to the extremely high number of meth users in Oregon. Well, all I have to say is what's good for law enforcement is bad for the Burpos. For a while we got by with our existing supply that we had with us from Virginia. But after a while, supplies ran low and I knew it was time to engage in some major conservation efforts. So finally, earlier this year when I was at the doctor one day, I remembered to ask for a prescription. Unfortunately, my troubles did not end there.
I have very clear memories of the day I went to pick it up at our local Fred Meyer. I was so excited to have our medicine cabinet back in order. Until the pharmacy guy passed it over to me. First of all, it was not in a box. It was in a bottle. And the pills were not red, they were white. Then the conversation went something like this:
Me: Excuse me, but this was supposed to be for Sudafed.
Pharmacy Guy: Yeah, it is. This is the generic.
Me: Oh, I see. Well, can I just get the regular box of Sudafed?
Pharmacy Guy: Well, this is what we give out now, is there a problem with that?
Me: Well, sort of but I guess I'll give it a try if it's the same thing.
So back to Saturday afternoon, I decide it's time to medicate. And in order to conserve very limited supplies of what we have left of the REAL Sudafed, I opted instead to whip out my bottle of prescription "Sudafed". First of all, I didn't whip it out at all. In reality, it was a very slow process. Because first it took me about ten minutes to recall which of the four bottles of prescription meds I had gotten for one thing or another in the past year was actually the "Sudafed". Let's see....is it this one? Or this one? Hmmm.... Finally, by process of elimination, I decided it was most likely this bottle of Cyclobenzaphrin with a big "May Cause Drowsiness" label on it. (The drowsiness thing seemed weird, but it was the only bottle of small, white pills I had.) Now, I could go off at this point and talk about how ridiculous and frankly, dangerous it is to have pill bottles labeled with long, incomprehensible names that don't at all resemble the real name of the drug you are looking for - and that they don't at least bother to include the name of the original drug that you might recognize instead of the long name generic. I mean, how the heck was I supposed to remember if this was the "Sudafed" or not? But that's for another post.
Well, I won't go into all the gory details here, but let's just say they weren't kidding about that whole drowsiness thing. Two hours later my face was practically in my bowl of lovely chicken and rice soup that Jeff had made for dinner (from scratch by the way, not the Campbells kind). Dammit. Is "Sudafed" supposed to make you drowsy? I didn't think so. And to top it off, I was still stuffed up! So at that point I had no choice but to go into our emergency supply of the real thing. Determined not to let it cut short our Saturday evening, I struggled through the rest of dinner AND a movie. However, don't ask me what is was about because I'm not sure I recall. What I do recall is hightailing it upstairs for bed faster than you can say Roadrunner when that thing was over (while finally feeling like I could breathe again, by the way).
But just because this so-called generic "Sudafed" didn't work for me the first time and made me horribly drowsy, that certainly did not stop me from trying it one more time. So, last night I decided to take another pill, this time right before bed. The good news: I slept very well. The bad news: I also spent the entire day today in a complete fog (that whole combined head cold and drug-induced drowsiness factor) and managed to pass out in bed for nearly two hours this afternoon after Ian went to sleep (thank goodness). Even as I write now, I'm only about half conscious - so please excuse any typos. (Hmmm...maybe I need this excuse every day.)
But hey, it doesn't take me three times to learn my lesson. Needless to say, I won't be partaking in any more Cyclobenzaphrin, thank you very much. So the next time we visit any of you out there reading this and announce that we need to take a little side trip to the drugstore just to pick up a few "necessities" for the trip home - you know what we are talking about. Oh, and we will also be accepting out-of-state donations over the holidays.
Until I write again.
Pre-child, I used to get sick with a cold typically once, maybe twice a year. Nowadays, it just constantly rotates through the house. How it typically works is that Ian picks up something from school, sports class, the grocery store, some museum or some park. Really, anywhere outside of our front door seems to be fair game for him. Then after a week or so he passes it along to Jeff. And then a few days later, I get it. Or, sometimes it's the other way around and I get it first and then Jeff. You know, just to mix things up a bit. And then once we are finally all better, it starts all over again. Of course it's important to note here that the "all better" part of this cycle lasts approximately 1.57 days, if we are lucky.
The thing I find most interesting about this whole thing is that Ian seems to be the person least affected by being sick. I, of course, have to knock on wood here but we have been extremely lucky with him in the whole illness area. His nose can be running like a cheetah (they run fast, don't they?), with coughing and the whole nine yards and he never seems to lose any energy. Just once, I'd like to see him knocked out on the couch for a day. Really, I would - but no such luck. Now, on the flip side, I also consider us very lucky in that this also means we have yet to spend one night up with him being sick. (Insert another very large knock on wood here.)
Now, Jeff and I, on the other hand, appear to get completely wiped out at the first sign of a sniffle. And that's what happened to me last week. I recall it like it was last week. Ian and Jeff had both been congested, but so far it had missed me. Until I arrived home after having dinner with my friend Brianne on Wednesday evening. Just about the second I walked in the door, I went from feeling fine one second to having a slight tickle in the back of my throat. You know the one I'm talking about. It's the feeling you can't quite explain, but you know exactly what it means. An hour later, my throat was consumed with a chalky/dusty feeling. (This is the best way I can describe how mine feels.) The throat thing just lingered for a day or so. And then the aches set in. That's when I knew I was in real trouble.
The highlight of this particular Sickville trip was perhaps at about 4 a.m. on Saturday morning when I was so stuffed up and desperate for relief that I actually found myself in our downstairs hall bathroom (so as not to disturb the sleepers upstairs) with my face shoved in the sink with very hot water in an attempt to let the steam do its magic on my nasal passages. I believe there was a washcloth involved as well but I'm not totally sure because it was early and my eyes were shut. But it didn't work either. By Saturday evening, I knew it was time to get serious and start medicating. Yep, it was time for some Sudafed.
Now, in case you are wondering why I didn't whip out the ole' box of Sudafed days ago, it's because being an Oregonian now, I am Sudafed challenged. You see, I can't just simply walk into a drug store, go up to the counter and sign a little log and walk away with my little red and white box of the good stuff. No sirree. I have to get a prescription for it. This is a state law that took effect shortly before we moved here due to the extremely high number of meth users in Oregon. Well, all I have to say is what's good for law enforcement is bad for the Burpos. For a while we got by with our existing supply that we had with us from Virginia. But after a while, supplies ran low and I knew it was time to engage in some major conservation efforts. So finally, earlier this year when I was at the doctor one day, I remembered to ask for a prescription. Unfortunately, my troubles did not end there.
I have very clear memories of the day I went to pick it up at our local Fred Meyer. I was so excited to have our medicine cabinet back in order. Until the pharmacy guy passed it over to me. First of all, it was not in a box. It was in a bottle. And the pills were not red, they were white. Then the conversation went something like this:
Me: Excuse me, but this was supposed to be for Sudafed.
Pharmacy Guy: Yeah, it is. This is the generic.
Me: Oh, I see. Well, can I just get the regular box of Sudafed?
Pharmacy Guy: Well, this is what we give out now, is there a problem with that?
Me: Well, sort of but I guess I'll give it a try if it's the same thing.
So back to Saturday afternoon, I decide it's time to medicate. And in order to conserve very limited supplies of what we have left of the REAL Sudafed, I opted instead to whip out my bottle of prescription "Sudafed". First of all, I didn't whip it out at all. In reality, it was a very slow process. Because first it took me about ten minutes to recall which of the four bottles of prescription meds I had gotten for one thing or another in the past year was actually the "Sudafed". Let's see....is it this one? Or this one? Hmmm.... Finally, by process of elimination, I decided it was most likely this bottle of Cyclobenzaphrin with a big "May Cause Drowsiness" label on it. (The drowsiness thing seemed weird, but it was the only bottle of small, white pills I had.) Now, I could go off at this point and talk about how ridiculous and frankly, dangerous it is to have pill bottles labeled with long, incomprehensible names that don't at all resemble the real name of the drug you are looking for - and that they don't at least bother to include the name of the original drug that you might recognize instead of the long name generic. I mean, how the heck was I supposed to remember if this was the "Sudafed" or not? But that's for another post.
Well, I won't go into all the gory details here, but let's just say they weren't kidding about that whole drowsiness thing. Two hours later my face was practically in my bowl of lovely chicken and rice soup that Jeff had made for dinner (from scratch by the way, not the Campbells kind). Dammit. Is "Sudafed" supposed to make you drowsy? I didn't think so. And to top it off, I was still stuffed up! So at that point I had no choice but to go into our emergency supply of the real thing. Determined not to let it cut short our Saturday evening, I struggled through the rest of dinner AND a movie. However, don't ask me what is was about because I'm not sure I recall. What I do recall is hightailing it upstairs for bed faster than you can say Roadrunner when that thing was over (while finally feeling like I could breathe again, by the way).
But just because this so-called generic "Sudafed" didn't work for me the first time and made me horribly drowsy, that certainly did not stop me from trying it one more time. So, last night I decided to take another pill, this time right before bed. The good news: I slept very well. The bad news: I also spent the entire day today in a complete fog (that whole combined head cold and drug-induced drowsiness factor) and managed to pass out in bed for nearly two hours this afternoon after Ian went to sleep (thank goodness). Even as I write now, I'm only about half conscious - so please excuse any typos. (Hmmm...maybe I need this excuse every day.)
But hey, it doesn't take me three times to learn my lesson. Needless to say, I won't be partaking in any more Cyclobenzaphrin, thank you very much. So the next time we visit any of you out there reading this and announce that we need to take a little side trip to the drugstore just to pick up a few "necessities" for the trip home - you know what we are talking about. Oh, and we will also be accepting out-of-state donations over the holidays.
Until I write again.
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