One of the most frustrating parts of post surgery for me has been my lips. They hurt. As if I was a slug and I just took a salt bath and am now drip drying in the sun. The constant burning in my lips is an occasional distraction from the whole jaw pain thing, but I must say: I don’t like it. The liquid Children’s Motrin I take is about 3 tsp for 300 mg of anti-inflammatory. That’s a lot of liquid, but it dilutes the 6 mgs sodium per dose which is probably the thing that burns my poor raw lips. I would like to say I can’t IMAGINE what it would be like to have even one undiluted mg sodium in my mouth right now…but I can’t.
The Tuesday after surgery I found out the very hard way that Advil and Aleve have lots of sodium in them. I tried to grind an Aleve up and take it with yogurt. First of all, don’t try taking meds with yogurt if you have not seen if you can eat yogurt yet. That was waaay too soon for me to try anything other than liquid, but since I had been taking the Toredol mixed with water, I guess I thought Aleve in yogurt would taste even better.
To quote Ralphie in the Simpsons: It tastes like BURNING!!!!
Oh ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. ow. ow.
Owieee.
Oweeeee.
Yes, I went to UCSC and proudly flaunt my Mighty Banana Slug Mascot. No, I was not trying to commit Banana Slug suicide because Elfland is no more. It was purely an accident. A very. painful. accident.
One would think I’d have learned.
Here’s how my relationship with Court goes:
I do things. Lots of times I frenzy mid-thing and break something (usually on myself). Court looks at me with sometimes pity, often superior contempt, and lots of annoyance that I am bleeding on his Invader Zim comforter. Rinse. Repeat.
Court is a smart guy. A very smart guy. As far as I am concerned, he is pretty much the best thing to come out of Kansas City, Missouri (pronounced meh-zir-uh) EVER (Take THAT Harry S. Truman, Walt Disney, Jean Harlow, Robert Heinlein, Ginger Rogers, Ernest Hemingway, and Eminem!) He’s one in a google, but (there had to be one of those) sometimes he has a little bit of what one might consider a fragile ego. Even though he is brilliant (and I don’t give that term out willy-nilly), sometimes he comes up with ideas that seem quite obviously (for lack of a better word) DUMB to me, but by the way he stink-eye’s me when I begin to oppose said NOT brilliant idea, I must sadly, for the sake of building up my own street cred in the family, let him see it through.
Now this may seem like a perfect “I told you so” set up…but I don’t say that. (I do think it a lot, but I don’t say it…especially now when I am banded shut.) For example, Court is a very frugal and practical man. Operative word here is MAN. So, one day he pulled some ground beef out of the fridge that, in my opinion, did not look um…ideal. he asked “Does this meat seem okay to you?” And I looked at it and shook my head. And he looked disappointed. As if I Was asking him to waste perfectly good meat. So I smelled it. It wasn’t rancid smelling, so I couldn’t argue that, but I didn’t think it should look that way and it had been in the fridge a little bit, so if it was me…trash-o-la. My motto on “Is it still good?”: If you have doubts, throw it away. You’re worth it. I learned that from Dave. Court then said in his “I’m gunna do this. It’s the right thing to do. Don’t talk me out of this. I refuse to waste food. If you tell me to throw it away I will do so resentfully and never really believe you were right” voice, “I’m just making Sloppy Joes.” I said “We could go to McDonald’s” and he said “You don’t like my Sloppy Joes?” and gave me the dying baby cow eyes. Dang.
So, he began to cook…and when the meat began to cook, I said “Don’t you think that smells a little OFF?” And he said “What do you mean?” and he had THAT TONE. That “don’t you dare tell me I am doing all this for nothing TONE” so I said, “Nothing.” But here’s the thing: I cook. I have been cooking for a long time. I am not a master chef by any stretch, but I do a lot of baking and cooking and have been known to cook up a pound of ground beef here and there (read: every night I could get away with it since Mexican food IS life) and I have learned to rely on my nose. If it smells off, it’s off. If it smells done, it’s probably done. If it smells like it’s burning and the recipe calls for another 30 minutes, your recipe is wrong (unless your recipe is for very very burnt food).
He finished making his Sloppy Joes and I knew I was going to have to eat a little bit so as not to offend, but before I could get a spoonful in my mouth, Court took a bite of his Joe and said with a hesitant “It just occurred to me so I should say something because something might be wrong” voice, “You know, this doesn’t taste right.” To which I replied, “It’s okay to go to McDonalds now.” And so we did. the End.
Why did I just launch into this? Because I did NOT want to grind up Aleve and take it. Dr. Li had recommended liquid Motrin on Tuesday after surgery, so I was all set to sign op for the Liquid Motrin Gang. I thought grinding up pills sounded horrible and there is a reason they make it into pills and then coat it on top of that. I asked for liquid Motrin instead. But before spending all that money, Court insisted I try. So I did. And it hurt. A lot. Say, open wound and lemon tree kind of pain.
Court felt bad and went and got me Children’s Motrin. There are about 4 doses per bottle and the bottles are not cheap and he knew I would be taking this for a while, so the next day he went to Costco and bought four bottles of Children’s Motrin in Original Berry Flavor, AND was very excited to show me a HUGE bottle of Advil Liquid Capsules that he thought I should puncture and inject into my mouth because whereas there were 8 doses per bottle of the Children’s Motrin (at $.56 a dose), there were 240 capsules in the Advil Liquigel bottle (120 doses at $.11 per dose).
I could care less about that kind of money when PAIN is involced, but when it looked like I was going to shut him down without even trying it, he looked hurt, so I played along. How bad could it be? He got a pin, punctured the capsule, and squeezed a drop out. Not enough. So he cut the tip off with a pair of scissors. He was being very scientific about it…and then when he had a little glob of stuff, he looked lost. Now what? He put a little on his finger and put it in his mouth. Nice of him to try it first. Shocked, he said “It numbs on the spot!” I warily looked at the elated numb-tongued boy and realised he would not understand that my mouth is a cheese grater of open wounds, so I put the tiniest bit on my finger and put my finger on the inside of my cheek (since I have no access to my tongue). Guess what? IT BURNED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ow.
Ow.
Ow.
Sometimes I want to hit Court over the head with his seeming obsession with getting the best deal and going as generic as possible. Not because I don’t have the same mentality. Mostly because when I do insist on things that I have already learned my lesson about, he is skeptical of my results and must “see for himself” and so I end up having to painfully watch or experience the lesson again.
Luckily once he has learned the lesson, he is not game for learning it twice, so it’s like I have a little review of why I do or don’t use/do something, and we move on.
But really, would YOU ever think it was a good idea to take the medicine out of the shell and drink it? There’s a reason they spend a lot of money diluting that stuff into yucky tasting grape flavored liquid if you HAVE to drink it. And if it comes in a shell, odds are, it’s not any kind of flavor you want to try.
Copyright 2007 Shelby Cass. All rights reserved
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