FUCK you
So I almost died last night. For those of you who don't know the story, here's why
I've had an itch in my vulva area for over 2 weeks now. Just an itch, no discharge or odor or any other symptoms of a yeast infection, but it's still annoying. It kind of felt like I'd irritated the skin down there somehow, but no new soaps or anything that could have caused that, and I always let the area out in the open air (I wear gym shorts with no underwear when I'm off work because my skin gets irritated easily when I put anything near it that it doesn't like). So it bothered me, but nothing seemed to help. All the home remedies say to use vinegar and water to wash it and that will cure it, or salt water, but salt water gives me chemical burns on my skin and in my mouth, so I knew not to use that more than once when once didn't help. I tried peroxide too, and that didn't help, and after a few days the free clinic was open and they saw me there though I didn't have an appointment, and the doctor gave me a prescription for some vagisil crap that came in two doses and would knock out a yeast infection. After one dose, it burned and didn't stop the itch, and the second dose didn't stop the itch and the burn was worse, so I stopped using it and called him, and it turned out I didn't have a yeast infection (the culture came back negative) but now I had a chemical burn down there, so he gave me a burn cream. The cream helped right when I put it on, but the burn always came back after a half hour or so, and the skin started sloughing off like it does when burns heal, so it was uncomfortable.
Fast forward a week. I feel a bit better but the itch and burn are still hanging around. The doctor recommends that I use a vinegar and water douche to clean the last bit of whatever is in there out. I have heard pissing and moaning about how bad douche is my entire life. Ad nauseum. My mom HATED douche and railed against it every day of my life for the 16 years I lived at home. So I have heard how evil douche is and I'd never use a perfume-y douche to make my cunt smell better, but all the home remedy sites and books and people I talk to said vinegar and water helps, so his advice did have precedent, plus last year I'd used a vinegar and water douche for the first time in my life, one time, when I had an itch down there, and it cleared right up, so I decided to give the douche a try. Sunday night I use the douche, and it actually clears up everything for about an hour, but then predictably the itch comes back, so whatever, I failed, I go to sleep.
Mionday I feel like crap all day. The itch has become a burning again, and I have a headache and I feel hot all the time (but my migraines always make my head feel hot, so that doesn't set off alarm bells or anything) and I feel kind of weak and my stomach hurts (but I have acid reflux, plus my migraines always make me nauseated, so again, no alarm bells) and I try some benadryl cream down there, which helps the burning for awhile, and then try some cortisone cream, which helps but again, the burning comes back, so I get frustrated and go to sleep, hoping I feel better in the morning. At about 3 AM, I wake up with burning down there, plus stabbing pain in my abdomen, so fuck, I know something's wrong now, and I dig into my laundry quarters to get enough money to take a cab to the hospital, call the cab, call the hospital, and get there in about an hour. I'm doubled over filling out intake paperwork and answering questions, and they don't necessarily seem to be panicking about my answers, until I tell them about the itch and burn and chemical burn and douche, and then they leap into warp speed and get me into a room quickly and do a culture and draw blood.
To make a long story short, I have Toxic Shock syndrome, that rare rare rare disease warned of by every tampon container in existence, which apparently isn't as rare as people think it is. The doctor said a lot of women get milder forms of it, but because they mistake the symptoms for something else like I did, they never know, and the body can fight the milder forms off if it can eject whatever is causing the TSS (like when your period flushes crap out of your body) but since I don't get a period but once a year now that I'm on depo, my body didn't know what to do. What probably happened is some of the burn cream and the sloughed-off akin traveled its way down and lodged somewhere in my body, and then festered there, and when I used the douche, it pushed it even further inside me (ew ew ew). The doctors said if I'd waited for even a few more hours to come to the hospital, I could have died. They gave me Zithromax, which is a strong-ass antibiotic, and it cleared the shit up right away (I still have a little itch, but it totally knocked out the burning and stomach pains within a half hour of me taking the first two-pill dose, and I have 4 more one-pill doses over the next 4 days to make sure it's gone). The little itch is probably just irritated skin, which is probably all this was in the first place, and it will heal when I leave it alone and don't poke it with salt water and vinegar and peroxide and creams and shit over and over again. So I'm really weak right now, like I feel WIPED OUT, but I still feel better than I have in over two weeks, which is a relief.
So that's how I almost died, and I posted a truncated version of this on my Facebook to let people know what happened, and of course, it took awhile, but someone had to crawl up my cunt and remind me that it was a BAD IDEA to use douche (um, I ALMOST DIED...don't you think that is a stronger cautionary tale than anything YOU could say to me?) plus I used a douche a year ago and it HELPED ME. Yes, I will never douche again after what happened this time, but don't piss all over me because OMG DOUCHING IS BAD. I get that. The ALMOST DYING thing kind of cleared that up for me, without your help. OF course, the DOUCHE IS BAD person also had to then tell me that it was "time to find a new doctor!" Well that would be great and all, except that I don't have insurance, so I go to the free clinic and use the doctor they give me. She lives at home with her parents and they pay for everything, so she has no idea what it's like to have to pay for your own shit and barely scrape by. She's never had to use a free clinic in her life, so she doesn't know what it's like to be grateful for even shitty healthcare because it's better than no healthcare at all. Am I saying her life is a cake walk? No, I am not. I'm sure she has struggles and problems that I can't even fathom, but that's why I don't traipse all over her page and tell her what to do every time she posts something, because I know that I don't know everything. Plus the way she worded the DOUCHE IS BAD thing really pisses me off, because she said her doctor would "yell at me for 25 minutes if she even heard I used a douche." Um...emotional abuse isn't ok, no matter the reason for it, and your deeply important point about how douche is bad is great and all, but I ALMOST DIED TODAY, so I get that douching is bad, and the words "let that be a lesson to you" are indeed unnecessary at this point, I assure you. ALMOST DYING clears that all up for me, thanks.
I get that people are trying to help (how in the name of fuck they think THIS will help is beyond me, but I understand that helping me somehow is their objective in leaving these comments) but I'm weak, tired, sick, afraid of the ER bill that will soon be coming to me because of yesterday's adventures, and also just plain scared to death after ALMOST DYING today, so it's really not time to lecture me about how I shouldn't have done the thing that got me in this position. I GET THAT NOW THANK YOU. I can't build a time machine to go back and stop myself from using the douche, so I don't know what you hope to accomplish by being a douche yourself and telling me your doctor would yell at me for using a douche in the first place. Plus I really resent you treating me like I'm too stupid to have never heard that douching is bad. I've heard it was bad. I've also had it help me in the past when I was having a problem similar to this one, and while I will never do it again after the whole ALMOST DYING thing, I don't think I was a total idiot for thinking it might help me this time when it did indeed help me a year ago.
ARGH. tl;dr I almost died but I feel better now, and people are jerkheads. But some people aren't jerkheads, so I wanted to let all you non-jerkhead people know what was going on. Thanks in advance for not being jerkheads.
EDIT:
Holy fucking shit. She just replied to my comment about WHY I used the douche (it helped me before) and how I wouldn't do it if I'd known what was going to happen, but I didn't do it blindly because of medical advice alone, I did it because using a douche had helped me once in the past, and I swear to fucking GOD she JUST SAID "Well I'm glad the lesson didn't cost you your life."
o_0
What a completely compassionless, heartless, soulless response to make. Jesus CHRIST that woman has no capacity for human empathy. It's scary.
I've had an itch in my vulva area for over 2 weeks now. Just an itch, no discharge or odor or any other symptoms of a yeast infection, but it's still annoying. It kind of felt like I'd irritated the skin down there somehow, but no new soaps or anything that could have caused that, and I always let the area out in the open air (I wear gym shorts with no underwear when I'm off work because my skin gets irritated easily when I put anything near it that it doesn't like). So it bothered me, but nothing seemed to help. All the home remedies say to use vinegar and water to wash it and that will cure it, or salt water, but salt water gives me chemical burns on my skin and in my mouth, so I knew not to use that more than once when once didn't help. I tried peroxide too, and that didn't help, and after a few days the free clinic was open and they saw me there though I didn't have an appointment, and the doctor gave me a prescription for some vagisil crap that came in two doses and would knock out a yeast infection. After one dose, it burned and didn't stop the itch, and the second dose didn't stop the itch and the burn was worse, so I stopped using it and called him, and it turned out I didn't have a yeast infection (the culture came back negative) but now I had a chemical burn down there, so he gave me a burn cream. The cream helped right when I put it on, but the burn always came back after a half hour or so, and the skin started sloughing off like it does when burns heal, so it was uncomfortable.
Fast forward a week. I feel a bit better but the itch and burn are still hanging around. The doctor recommends that I use a vinegar and water douche to clean the last bit of whatever is in there out. I have heard pissing and moaning about how bad douche is my entire life. Ad nauseum. My mom HATED douche and railed against it every day of my life for the 16 years I lived at home. So I have heard how evil douche is and I'd never use a perfume-y douche to make my cunt smell better, but all the home remedy sites and books and people I talk to said vinegar and water helps, so his advice did have precedent, plus last year I'd used a vinegar and water douche for the first time in my life, one time, when I had an itch down there, and it cleared right up, so I decided to give the douche a try. Sunday night I use the douche, and it actually clears up everything for about an hour, but then predictably the itch comes back, so whatever, I failed, I go to sleep.
Mionday I feel like crap all day. The itch has become a burning again, and I have a headache and I feel hot all the time (but my migraines always make my head feel hot, so that doesn't set off alarm bells or anything) and I feel kind of weak and my stomach hurts (but I have acid reflux, plus my migraines always make me nauseated, so again, no alarm bells) and I try some benadryl cream down there, which helps the burning for awhile, and then try some cortisone cream, which helps but again, the burning comes back, so I get frustrated and go to sleep, hoping I feel better in the morning. At about 3 AM, I wake up with burning down there, plus stabbing pain in my abdomen, so fuck, I know something's wrong now, and I dig into my laundry quarters to get enough money to take a cab to the hospital, call the cab, call the hospital, and get there in about an hour. I'm doubled over filling out intake paperwork and answering questions, and they don't necessarily seem to be panicking about my answers, until I tell them about the itch and burn and chemical burn and douche, and then they leap into warp speed and get me into a room quickly and do a culture and draw blood.
To make a long story short, I have Toxic Shock syndrome, that rare rare rare disease warned of by every tampon container in existence, which apparently isn't as rare as people think it is. The doctor said a lot of women get milder forms of it, but because they mistake the symptoms for something else like I did, they never know, and the body can fight the milder forms off if it can eject whatever is causing the TSS (like when your period flushes crap out of your body) but since I don't get a period but once a year now that I'm on depo, my body didn't know what to do. What probably happened is some of the burn cream and the sloughed-off akin traveled its way down and lodged somewhere in my body, and then festered there, and when I used the douche, it pushed it even further inside me (ew ew ew). The doctors said if I'd waited for even a few more hours to come to the hospital, I could have died. They gave me Zithromax, which is a strong-ass antibiotic, and it cleared the shit up right away (I still have a little itch, but it totally knocked out the burning and stomach pains within a half hour of me taking the first two-pill dose, and I have 4 more one-pill doses over the next 4 days to make sure it's gone). The little itch is probably just irritated skin, which is probably all this was in the first place, and it will heal when I leave it alone and don't poke it with salt water and vinegar and peroxide and creams and shit over and over again. So I'm really weak right now, like I feel WIPED OUT, but I still feel better than I have in over two weeks, which is a relief.
So that's how I almost died, and I posted a truncated version of this on my Facebook to let people know what happened, and of course, it took awhile, but someone had to crawl up my cunt and remind me that it was a BAD IDEA to use douche (um, I ALMOST DIED...don't you think that is a stronger cautionary tale than anything YOU could say to me?) plus I used a douche a year ago and it HELPED ME. Yes, I will never douche again after what happened this time, but don't piss all over me because OMG DOUCHING IS BAD. I get that. The ALMOST DYING thing kind of cleared that up for me, without your help. OF course, the DOUCHE IS BAD person also had to then tell me that it was "time to find a new doctor!" Well that would be great and all, except that I don't have insurance, so I go to the free clinic and use the doctor they give me. She lives at home with her parents and they pay for everything, so she has no idea what it's like to have to pay for your own shit and barely scrape by. She's never had to use a free clinic in her life, so she doesn't know what it's like to be grateful for even shitty healthcare because it's better than no healthcare at all. Am I saying her life is a cake walk? No, I am not. I'm sure she has struggles and problems that I can't even fathom, but that's why I don't traipse all over her page and tell her what to do every time she posts something, because I know that I don't know everything. Plus the way she worded the DOUCHE IS BAD thing really pisses me off, because she said her doctor would "yell at me for 25 minutes if she even heard I used a douche." Um...emotional abuse isn't ok, no matter the reason for it, and your deeply important point about how douche is bad is great and all, but I ALMOST DIED TODAY, so I get that douching is bad, and the words "let that be a lesson to you" are indeed unnecessary at this point, I assure you. ALMOST DYING clears that all up for me, thanks.
I get that people are trying to help (how in the name of fuck they think THIS will help is beyond me, but I understand that helping me somehow is their objective in leaving these comments) but I'm weak, tired, sick, afraid of the ER bill that will soon be coming to me because of yesterday's adventures, and also just plain scared to death after ALMOST DYING today, so it's really not time to lecture me about how I shouldn't have done the thing that got me in this position. I GET THAT NOW THANK YOU. I can't build a time machine to go back and stop myself from using the douche, so I don't know what you hope to accomplish by being a douche yourself and telling me your doctor would yell at me for using a douche in the first place. Plus I really resent you treating me like I'm too stupid to have never heard that douching is bad. I've heard it was bad. I've also had it help me in the past when I was having a problem similar to this one, and while I will never do it again after the whole ALMOST DYING thing, I don't think I was a total idiot for thinking it might help me this time when it did indeed help me a year ago.
ARGH. tl;dr I almost died but I feel better now, and people are jerkheads. But some people aren't jerkheads, so I wanted to let all you non-jerkhead people know what was going on. Thanks in advance for not being jerkheads.
EDIT:
Holy fucking shit. She just replied to my comment about WHY I used the douche (it helped me before) and how I wouldn't do it if I'd known what was going to happen, but I didn't do it blindly because of medical advice alone, I did it because using a douche had helped me once in the past, and I swear to fucking GOD she JUST SAID "Well I'm glad the lesson didn't cost you your life."
o_0
What a completely compassionless, heartless, soulless response to make. Jesus CHRIST that woman has no capacity for human empathy. It's scary.