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OK so I’m miserable. I have this history with rashes. I’m fairly allergic to certain things (ragweed, grass, wool, certain kinds of self-tanner, certain antibiotics). One of the reactions I often get is a rash, or hives. Usually a reaction like this reacts very well to steroids, and I’m better within a day of starting them. But not this time.

About a week and a half ago I started having an allergic reaction to something. I don’t know what it was, since I wasn’t in contact with anything that usually makes me react, and I haven’t changed my diet or my medications or anything like that (or at least I don’t think I did). It started with just a hive - one hive, on my neck, which started on a Friday but was gone by Sunday. I figured “Oh well, false alarm.” Then last Monday morning (8/11) I woke up with a GIANT swollen lower lip. I mean, my lip looked like a hot dog. It was gross! So I went to the doctor.

“Allergic reaction,” was the theory. Doctor gave me prednisone, advised me to take benadryl if I could handle it, continue taking Zyrtec (which I already take daily for the grass, ragweed, etc.), and make an appointment with the allergy clinic for testing. Over the next five days, I got worse, not better. My lip stopped swelling and returned to its normal dimensions, but I started getting hives all over my body. Really different from hives I’ve had in the past - very wide, spread out, flat, curvy looking things. Almost like an abstract floral or paisley pattern! Weird. So this past Saturday I went to the doctor again.

I was worried maybe I was actually allergic to prednisone, but he didn’t think so. He gave me a stronger dose, and switched me from Zyrtec to Allegra - every eight hours. So now I’m pumping myself full of steroids and antihistamines and guess what - I’m getting worse. The itching is much worse, the pattern is more widespread. It has crept from my shoulders to my neck to the back of my scalp, and also down onto my torso and my hips. Basically, I’m in itchy, paranoid agony. I stayed home from work today to take benadryl and try to sleep, but this time the benadryl didn’t help. I’ve tried various other home treatments - cool compresses, ice, cool baths and showers, aloe vera gel - but nothing seems to help very much.

So tonight I go to bed hoping and praying there’s some improvement by tomorrow. If there isn’t, I am not sure what to do. Allergic reactions like this are the hardest to treat since the cause is completely unknown, although I think I have some theories. For instance, I never used to use Splenda at all but I recently started putting it in my iced tea, and I have been drinking A LOT of iced tea. So I stopped using Splenda completely as of yesterday, but I haven’t improved yet. Still hopeful that’s the ticket though.

I guess if I get up and have hives or swelling on my face, or the itching is so bad I can’t handle it, I’ll have to go to the doctor again and beg for a steroid injection or something. Certainly if it starts causing any tightness in my throat then I’ll have to probably go to the hospital. Insane! Oh and this doesn’t even touch on the strange side effects I get from taking so much prednisone - weird manic episodes, sweats, increased appetite, nausea, food tastes funny, etc.

I did make an appointment with the allergy clinic - but not until September 4. I have to stop all antihistamines completely for five days before my appointment, and I’m dreading it. I just wish I could wake up tomorrow with all of this gone.

So after the results from my recent endometrial biopsy came back negative, I was quite relieved. I naively assumed that things would start to get better - not because I’d had a biopsy, but because I was on the Pill again. I figured being on the Pill would eliminate some of the more unpleasant monthly side effects I was experiencing - like cramps so bad I couldn’t walk, and a ridiculously unpredictable cycle. However, my first cycle after the biopsy was even worse than usual. I never really got a period in the technical sense. I did, however, get killer cramps that absolutely disabled me for a whole day. On top of that, something just didn’t feel right, I couldn’t explain it succinctly but something was off, way off.

So I emailed my doctor’s office and they said she was out that week, but they’d get back to me. Two weeks went by. I emailed again. This time I got a reply about an hour later (with an apology for misplacing my previous message). My doctor prescribed some antibiotics, which she instructed me to pick up at the pharmacy ASAP, and advised me that if troublesome symptoms persisted, I would need to come in to the office for a follow-up.

Hmm…antibiotics. OK, she wasn’t really clear on WHY I needed to take them, but I went ahead and took them anyway (three days of zithromax, which really fucked with my digestive tract, but whatever). I also did some more Internet research and came to the conclusion that there are two possibilities:

1. She thought that I had developed an infection as a result of the biopsy procedure, a rare but not impossible side effect.

2. She thought she had perforated my uterus during the procedure, another rare but not impossible side effect.

Neither possibility thrills me, but I took my antibiotics. I had a period not long after they were finished, and while it was still a drag, it was just slightly better than what I dealt with the month previous. So I figure, I wait for the next one and see how it goes - if my symptoms continue to improve, then I probably don’t have anything to worry about. At least not until the next wacky, abnormal test result.

Damn uterus.

This morning I was listening to NPR and heard a detailed story on the continuing investigation into illegal hiring practices at the Justice Department under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. Specifically, the enfant terrible who seemed to be at the center of the hiring fiasco was one Monica Goodling.

Monica Goodling. What a stupid, naive, misinformed, ignorant little troll she was (and is, for all I know). Ms. Goodling received her law degree from Regent University (Pat Robertson’s college), where the law school’s mission is to “use the legal profession to enact the will of God” or some such tripe. The Washington Post has a pretty thorough summary of all the asinine, bone-headed things she did on the behalf of her radical right-wing mentors. A few highlights:

Thirty-four candidates told investigators that Goodling or one of her deputies raised the topic of abortion in job interviews and 21 said they discussed same-sex marriage, the report said. Another job applicant said he admired Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, only to watch Goodling “frown” and respond, “But she’s pro-choice.”

She and her aides regularly gave candidates for career civil service jobs a form designed for political appointees that sought information on party affiliation and financial contributions. When job seekers sometimes raised objections, Goodling replied that the form was a mistake, showing that she was “aware that it was improper,” the report said.

…

Leslie Hagen, an assistant U.S. attorney who according to yesterday’s report was denied at least two positions at the Justice Department because Goodling suspected she was a lesbian, is petitioning current leaders for a “mutually agreeable permanent position,” according to Lisa J. Banks, Hagen’s employment attorney.

In another instance that investigators called “particularly damaging,” Goodling refused to hire an award-winning career prosecutor with nearly two decades of experience for a temporary counterterrorism job in Washington because his wife served as vice chairman of the local Democratic Party and ran local congressional campaigns.

Get all that? I think my favorite is the part where Goodling prevented another woman from getting a promotion because she suspected she was a lesbian.

Are you angry yet? Because these are the kind of people that the Bush administration put into positions of power from top to bottom. People who put politics before country, and duty, and morality. People who feel they are above the law, and entitled to ignore it when it suits them.

So just to balance out the portrait of a woman in a position of power that she doesn’t deserve, and abuses horribly once she’s in it, here’s the complete opposite. Nancy Pelosi is a woman who is accomplished, intelligent, and articulate. She definitely deserves her position as Speaker of the House (I’d argue she deserves better). People like Monica Goodling and her ilk throw around the term “San Francisco values” as some kind of nudging, winking reference to, let’s be honest, gays. Because to them, gays (or lesbians, or bisexual people, or transgendered people) aren’t humans, and the fact that places exist (like San Francisco) where they are afforded all the same human and civil rights as everyone else just really messes up their parochial world view.

In this piece on Huffington Post, Nancy gives another interesting explanation of the use of the term “San Francisco values.” First she talks about what those values really are - things like social and economic justice, equality, environmentalism. Then she talks about why the right-wing hate machine really uses the term “San Francisco values,” and how it helps their true agenda. Please watch the video - Nancy is awesome. Somehow even when she’s talking about the way that right-wing thugs use her name or image in a hateful way, she manages to remain even-tempered and pragmatic.

She puts an empty-headed idiot like Goodling to shame.

I am very high maintenance. Not so much to others - mostly to myself. I mean, I spend a lot of money to keep myself groomed and attired in the style that I think is appropriate. Could I give up some of the extras? Yes, but then I wouldn’t be a princess.

In the past month, I’ve had a haircut, brow waxes, facial, fills for my gel nails, Mystic tan sessions, a pedicure, and a trim just for my bangs (that was, thank goodness, complementary). Some days I feel like Frankenstein. On the other hand, if I didn’t do all these things that I do regularly, I’d be a pale, pimply freak with bushy eyebrows, frizzy hair, and nasty looking feet. I comfort myself with the thought that I don’t spend nearly as much on my own upkeep as some other women do. For instance, I have not had (nor am I planning to have) any plastic surgery, botox, laser treatments, lip injections, or hair extensions. And I did my own highlights!

I might get a peel, though. Maybe.

So the new iPhone came out, and with it the new update to the iPhone operating system. I haven’t bought a 3G iPhone yet (I’ll probably wait until next month), but I did update my iPhone to 2.0 and start exploring the app store. I found lots of cool apps for free and installed a few of them.

Over the weekend, I got an SMS from an unknown short code. In fact, I got two of them. Now I don’t like getting unsolicited SMS messages from people I don’t know - I’m a cheapie and currently have the default no-charge text plan that lets you send/receive 200 a month. When I upgrade my phone I’ll probably pay $5 to continue with this amount of texts. I only send and receive from a few people and I don’t want to end up paying the $.20 per text if I go over my 200.

Turns out the unknown text that I got was from Loopt. Specifically, a friend of mine (who shall remain nameless, because I doubt he realized this would happen) signed up for Loopt and wanted me to sign up too, so he put me in as one of his contacts. I don’t think he knew I’d get two unsolicited text messages from some weird code reminding me that I should install and sign up for Loopt (at least I hope he didn’t!). I guess I was kind of lucky, because some other people have gotten many of these unwanted, unsolicited, and potentially expensive text messages through Loopt, some of them from people they don’t know, and certainly many of them from people that they don’t normally text message with.

It’s turning into a real shitstorm, mostly because of the bland, blame-the-user attitude of the people behind Loopt. And here is where I provide you some documentation:

One of several complaint threads on Get Satisfaction

Merlin Mann’s well-written summary on Kung Fu Grippe

Justine’s summary of her own experience

A story on iPhone Alley

A CNet piece questioning the appeal/risks of the application itself

Loopt gets a big thumbs-down from me. I really don’t like these kinds of applications anyway - do I want people to be able to track my location on a map? Frankly, no. Not even my friends. That’s a little too much invasion of my privacy, so even if they hadn’t annoyed me with their spammy SMS, I definitely wouldn’t have used Loopt. Their kind of pathetic response to complaints just cements it - not only will I not install Loopt, but I’ll recommend to my friends and family that they don’t either. And you, Internet, here’s some free advice for you: don’t install Loopt. If you’re into that kind of stuff, wait for one of the other apps to be ready, and make sure they’ll handle the invite process responsibly.