Posts Tagged ‘Hypochondriac Stuff’
Yum, Baby Smells like… Italy?
You know that delicious, baked-bread smell of a small baby’s head? Well, my littlest one (not SO little anymore – 3 1/2 going on 19) still smells delicious and adorable.
And lately, she also smells like… Italy.
Or, to be precise, Italian food.
It all started with my quest to help quell her incessant, never-ending itchy scratchy skin. For the first couple of years, it was mostly her lower back that bothered her – I’d find her little back & tushie striped with fingernail marks and scratches where she had scratched herself raw from sheer itchiness. (Mind you, no actual RASH or bumps existed there. Even the skin didn’t look or feel particularly dry to the touch. But to her? Drove her CRAZY.)
Los Angeles is a dry place. I’ve been told it’s up there among the worst cities for skin. (Yes, that is the kind of thing we Los Angelinos talk about at parties. Sometimes beauty really is only skin-deep.) But I’m not planning to move my family out of here just because it’s not the best for our complexions, nor can I afford any of those fancy high-tech, no-mold, room-moisturizing and water-moisturizing systems.
So we get itchy. And Esther, with her daddy’s beautiful Moroccan-Isaeli skin, gets, as we say in the Vaknin household, “super itchy scratchy.”
For her first couple years, I mostly used Aquaphor, which has a sort of Vaseline-like consistency. It helped a bit, if I slathered it on her body day and night, but it didn’t seem to penetrate particularly deeply. This past year, the itching has spread to her front calves where she has torn them raw from scratching, and also to the base of her little neck, where she got a bit of sun poisoning this summer and now it keeps flaring up again and again.
I took her to the doctor to look at the sun poisoning flare-up and ask about the itching, and she shrugged & casually diagnosed that it ‘probably is eczema’ and wrote a prescription for some extra-strength cortisone cream that didn’t help whatsoever. Our insurance doesn’t cover fancy dermatologists, and it didn’t seem important enough to shell out that kind of dough, out of pocket, for another diagnosis.
So, back to the home remedies. Baby powder seemed to help the sun poison rash for a bit, until it didn’t. Oatmeal baths didn’t help at all, nor did baby oil baths. The expensive oatmeal creams, ‘natural eczema creams’, and other creams? Tried those too. Nothing worked.
Then, a new friend who owns a skin care empire made a suggestion. No, it wasn’t to buy $300 bottles of his company’s version of La Mer or whatever. It was simple: break open vitamin E capsules and put the vitamin E goo onto the open scratches. And use olive oil for daily maintenance.
Guess what!?
Yup. Ever since, Baby’s skin has been smooth as butter, silky as… um… silk.
And best of all, she smells like my favorite food.
Pasta olio.
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Mmmm. smells like Esther! (and yes, those ARE 'Star of David' pastas)
Flashback Friday! (Lice)
Most Fridays, I post an oldie but a goodie blog for your enjoyment. To those of you who just started reading The Grownup Girl recently, enjoy the “new” blog! To those of you who have been with me from the start, but have memories like mine, enjoy the “new” blog!
And to those who were with me from the start and who already read this blog and burned it into your memory, word for word, photogenically, I say:
What are you doing wasting your time dilly-dallying on my website? Get out there and find me a book deal!
If you hate to read, just click on the audio link, below.
BatSheva (BatSheva Vaknin) – LICE – the BLOG
Dude… SO unfair. I went through this already. As a kid, in second grade or whenever, I paid my dues. My lice dues. I sat forever as my mother combed poison through my scalp and hair, tearing the clumps that would allow quick passage and generally freaking me out to imagine those disgusting bugs laying their eggs in my head. Didn’t help that my school – a public school in DC, Lafayette – had a nurse’s office with a giant poster of a louse magnified, like, x 10,000.
If you’ve never seen a louse magnified 10,000 times, let me enlighten you: they are horrific. Seriously. Like, Roger Corman, or whoever is the current Horror Movie Master of our day (Andrew Weiner?) – I’m now giving you a free idea (though I do expect top billing and points on the back end if you use it): GIANT LICE. Seriously, they would be scarier than any Chuckie, Freddy, or Jason.
I’m not kidding! Take a second, and Google them. Or just click here. I didn’t want to actually put the image in my blog because honestly, I don’t want my blog to be directly associated with hurling. (Unless I’m doing the hurling, in which case I may write about it but I’m still not going to post a picture of it happening, ya know?)
Ok, so back to the main point of this blog. Me. I had lice. FUCKING LICE!!!!!!!!!
MOTHER FUCKING LICE!!!!!
Excuse me. I think the lice took over my brain and tripped a wire there. I’m back.
My middle daughter brought it home from school or wherever about two weeks ago. She had about ten of those little suckers crawling around her scalp. Her little sister had three. Both cases were gone in a day, after our nanny – who turns out to be a Lice Commando – seriously, she’s like the Rambo of Lice– hey, Roger Corman/Andy Wiener – there’s your Angelina Jolie! Lice Raider! – anyway, my nanny got a hold of some Pantene conditioner and a good lice comb, and, “voila!” Lice: Exterminated.
Not so easy with my lice. MY lice, turns out, had staying power. It was like all the coffee I drink had gone into their little lice bodies through my blood that they were sucking and turned them into Super Lice. Oh, I had the Lice Commando comb my hair, too. Twice. Didn’t work.
I had to take matters into my own hands (10 hours of running after three crazy out-of-school-for-the-summer kids, I can’t imagine why my nanny didn’t want to stay at my house yet ANOTHER hour just to help comb through a lice-infested head), so I continued her good work, every day, in the shower, myself.
The itching continued. And continued! What is up with that? The itching seemed to spread all over – the lice finally went away after the first week but the itching would flaring up any time I’d think about the whole nightmare. Psychosomatic, I know, but come on – enough already! Why don’t you leave me along and go pick on a kid who is only 400,000 x your size, you big bullies!!
Okay, I’m done ranting. Anyone have a hairbrush I can borrow?
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Shangri La for Lice
Flashback Friday! (No Pain, No Gain)
Every Friday, I post an oldie but a goodie blog for your enjoyment. To those of you who just started reading The Grownup Girl recently, enjoy the “new” blog! To those of you who have been with me from the start, but have memories like mine, enjoy the “new” blog!
And to those who were with me from the start and who already read this blog and burned it into your memory, word for word, photogenically, I say:
What are you doing wasting your time dilly-dallying on my website? Get out there and find me a book deal!
If you hate to read, just click on the audio link, below.
BatSheva (BatSheva Vaknin) – No Pain No Gain – the BLOG
I should have bought stock in Excedrin – I was onto Excedrin from around age 10 (years before the rest of the world – including Excedrin itself if you go by when they started running their migraine headache ads – discovered that Excedrin is THE only decent medical solution for a pounding migraine). Later, though, in my 20’s and early 30’s, Advil was my painkiller of choice. I loved those yummy little auburn pills, and they generally kicked the headache away, though occasionally I admit I had to take up to four at a time sometimes to really get the job done.
I’m not sure what caused me to stop taking painkillers for headaches recently. Perhaps I was tired of being jealous of my girlfriend who never takes any drugs for any pain, and decided to let her inspire me instead. Perhaps it was the comprehension of what it means to give birth to three babies without a drop of pain medicine – could a headache really be as painful as the giant head of a human forcing its way out of your vagina? No. It could not. (Sorry for that visual, guys, & sorry girls who aren’t moms yet.) (And – yo, High five, other moms!)
And yet…
My excuse for giving birth without painkillers had more to do with the baby’s health than my own – I liked the idea of keeping my baby drug-free for at least the first few days or weeks of its life. When it comes to my own body, it is not exactly a temple – I do have the occasional drink and over-indulge in desserts here and there, but I do eat pretty healthy, I don’t drink soda, and don’t do any drugs or heavy drinking like I may or may not have done in my teens and twenties. (Thank GOD we didn’t have YouTube and cameras everywhere back then. People may “remember,” but no one can prove I was anything less than a saint!)
But if not a temple, I do treat my body like something I’d like to keep around as long as possible, and in decent shape while I’m at it. So I eat healthfully, I drink tons of water, I exercise, and I don’t smoke or do drugs or drink more than a glass or so of wine a week.
So where does the Advil fit in? It doesn’t. I think years of listening to my homeopathic doctor has worn me down – I now believe him when he tells me Advil is hurting my body more in the long run than it is helping it in the short run. (For anyone who read my last blogyou know I didn’t bother to read up about it, so his word really is all I have to go on…)
One week ago, I found myself in the throes of a pretty obnoxious headache. Pounding head, rigid neck muscles… after a few hours, it grew worse and worse… until I was finally nauseous and ready to vomit. I lay on our couch, useless to my husband and my kids, and I tried to remember how much worse it must have been, giving birth. (Couldn’t remember, BTW – it’s true what they say about forgetting how it feels. Obvi – how else could women get suckered into having more than one child?)
Then – the most amazing thing happened. It went away.
First it was a ‘start and stop’ kind of a thing, where I’d think it was leaving me, only for it to return with a vengeance a few moments later. But finally, it was complete gone. And then I DID remember something about giving birth without drugs: that surreal moment after it’s done, and the baby is out. You feel more lucid and alive than ever before in your life. You survived! You made it! The endorphins kick in and you feel like ten million bucks. (Until the breastfeeding starts, and the lack of sleep overtakes you and makes you feel like a zombie, but we won’t burst that bubble just yet.)
This past weekend I lived through a mild flu/severe cold (who the hell can tell the difference?) without taking anything except for homeopathic remedies. (It actually may be time to buy stock in Oscillococcinum, that stuff is GOLD.) I’m still a little stuffy, but I made it through the worst of the storm and I was drug-free as the clouds lifted and the aches finally cleared. Modern medicine is fantastic. But as grateful as I am for all its bounty, I find myself even more thankful for my ever-stronger willpower that has afforded me a rare taste of that “light at the end of a tunnel” health I now relish.
Here’s to hoping it lasts…
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Hang in there, little guy! It'll be over soon, I promise!
Flashback Friday! (Muscle Spazz)
Every Friday, I post an oldie but a goodie blog for your enjoyment. To those of you who just started reading The Grownup Girl recently, enjoy the “new” blog! To those of you who have been with me from the start, but have memories like mine, enjoy the “new” blog!
And to those who were with me from the start and who already read this blog and burned it into your memory, word for word, photogenically, I say:
What are you doing wasting your time dilly-dallying on my website? Get out there and find me a book deal!
If you hate to read, just click on the audio link, below.
BatSheva (BatSheva Vaknin) – Muscle Spazz – the BLOG
We don’t appreciate what we’ve got until it’s gone.
NO, I’m not talking about breaking up with people or losing grandparents.
I’m talking about full usage of our body.
Colds, flu’s – don’t get me wrong, they suck, especially the ones that make your body ache so much you are sure you are actually dying.
But the upside of colds & flu’s are that– barring death – you know what it is and you know it will run its course.
Not so clear cut is the debilitating yet mysterious leg muscle spasm. Tonight, I was wrenched out of a fitful sleep by the most painful shin and calf spasm of my life.
I’m no stranger to muscle spasms, or “Charlie Horses”, as they are affectionately called by people who obviously do not have the same low pain threshold I do & can therefore joke about these nightmares of muscular terror. But ½ way through my 2nd pregnancy (I generally would get Charlie Horses about every other night when I’m pregnant), I realized that when my calf muscle would cramp unexpectedly into a tiny little bouncing ball of pain, if I shot out of bed and stomped on the corresponding foot, it would disappear as quickly as it came, and no one was the worse for it except my husband who by that point would have awaken, scared out of his wits that I was under attack from a lead-footed burglar.
None of this prepared me for what I had tonight (twice, so far). It was the double shin and calf spasm, each a foil to the other, so that if I stretched my calf my shin muscle, crafty sliver of a muscle that it is, would spasm & contract painfully, and if I stretched and massaged my shin, my calf would contract. Damn this devious duo! It’s 2:14am and I already was pushing the levels of my bedtime by succumbing to both House AND Gossip Girl instead of sleeping at a reasonable hour, and then dealing with my middle daughter’s pee-pee in the bed situation and then dealing with my baby daughter’s wake up in the night for no reason situation.
(Quick props to my DVR. O, those devastating old days of missing House just to put my first child back to sleep for the twentieth time… How did I survive?)
Then after sleeping for just a half hour, my son – the one child who can be trusted to sleep soundly through the night until one of his sisters wakes him at 6am – came into our room and asked to sleep in our bed. I knew his room still smelled like urine from his sister’s recent spill, so I caved & let him join us. Back to sleep… and a half hour later, up again with the incomprehensible Chinese torture spasms that were my shin & calf. Back to sleep again, and another 15 minutes or so later – up again with the same torture, only this time they refused to be tamed.
I limped over to the computer to research muscle spasm remedies (My kingdom for a banana!) and found myself writing this entry.
Ew, disgusting. Just to be sure the muscles stay calm, I took one website’s advice & drank the only electrolyte drink I had in the house – apple flavored Pedialyte. No WONDER my daughter wouldn’t touch that stuff with a ten foot pole of vomit, even after hurling everything else solid or liquid she had downed.
Na. Sty.
The coolest thing I just read was a short-term solution to cramping: pulling on your upper lip with thumb & forefinger. Huh?
Readers! Help! What else can a sister do in this situation? And don’t tell me send the boy back to his bed – I wouldn’t want to sleep in that pee pee cesspool either. And don’t tell me to clean up the pee pee – It’s almost three in the morning!
Miraculously, the muscles haven’t got into spasm since I sat down. Could writing really be a remedy to Charlie Horses?
In the meantime, I hope this is…
Goodnight.
c/xo
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
P.S. Editor’s Note: Haven’t had muscle spasms since this original blog! (Knocking on lotsssss of wood….)
Those crazy Upper East Siders. Making me stay up all night to catch up on their shenanigans!
It’s a Gas (The Fart Blog)
Enough about Wedding Dresses, Bullies and Christmas.
Let’s talk about farts.
Oh yes, my friends, I’m going there. Because the other day – when one my five year old daughter let one fly – and then burst out laughing – it occurred to me, farts aren’t just funny to teenage boys.
They’re funny to everyone.
Except, arguably, to the people trapped in the same room with someone else’s fart.
If only I had such a good sense of humor as a young girl. Specifically, at age twelve. Because, it was at age twelve that- as I lay in the same bed as my best friend and her boyfriend (NO we were not NAKED – we were watching Strange Brew, and she didn’t have a couch) – when I let fly one of the loudest, most embarrassing farts of my life.
Embarrassing because, (well, duh, I was a twelve year old girl, but also), I was lying there in that bed, next to a girl I deeply admired and her boyfriend who I had a crush on (and who, I might add, I wound up losing my virginity to, years later, but that’s a different story), and… I farted.
Correction – I BLASTED.
Yes, gentle readers. It was bad.
But remember how, three paragraphs ago, I wrote it was “one” of the loudest farts I ever did? Implying, there was another…
Cut to: years later, in Madrid, Spain. I’m in a club with my friend Tatiana, high on horribly potent European hash and drunk on whiskey cokas. I’m sitting behind the DJ booth glass, because Tatiana and I are “in” with the DJ, whose name escapes me, but whose penis may have ended up on one of our rolls of film.
What do you think happened?
I farted. But not a regular fart, the kind that happened most days, because at that point in my young life I was suffering from a terrible bout of lactose intolerance.
Poor Tatiana (my roommate at the time).
No, this fart was not just a lactose intolerant fart. Nor was it a mere ‘club kid-high-on-hashish’ fart.
It was a magical fart.
Because, just moments prior, I was falling down the rabbit hole of being too high and too drunk; I was spinning, I was unable to talk or communicate, and I was very close to passing out/throwing up/needing to check into a hospital for alcohol and possible hashish blood poisoning.
Through my pounding head and with my blurred vision, I could see Tatiana’s face, worried, concerned; she tried to ask if I was okay but I could not respond….
Until…
I farted.
And then – everything was okay in the world. Seriously. The spinning was gone, the wooziness disappeared, my drunken high throwupiness vanished, and my teetering on the abyss of a blackout had evaporated. I was back in the game!
Tatiana was there – and she will attest to the fact that not only was this fart magical, but it also could have won the Guinness Book of World Records in fart volume – we heard it loud and clear, trumpeting above and beyond the distant chimes of the otherwise floor-shakingly loud discotheque music and thumping bass line.
So you see, dear readers, farts come in all shapes, sizes, and volumes.
And they’re magic.
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Take off! No, you take off!! Dude. Who farted?
Is it a TUMOR???
Okay, maybe it was just a pimple. This time. But still, for a second there… I wasn’t sure.
It doesn’t make sense. I’m (somewhat) enlightened. I study Kabbalah. I believe in mind over matter. (Haven’t quite gotten the hang of practicing it, but that’s a different story.) I go to my homeopathic doctor for treatment of 99% of my issues or my kids’ sicknesses… and it works. I’m young (at least in my head), I’m fit, I am smart…
So why, after two hours of experiencing an ache in my ear (not inside the canal, in the ear itself), an ache that I couldn’t properly look at because of the difficulty looking inside one’s own ear, did I allow the thought to float into my head that maybe I have a tumor?
Chas V’Shalom! (shout out to all my Israeli & Kabbalah friends)
Forget the fact that I know that tumors generally don’t pop up overnight and create a soreness all around the surface area of the skin. Not to mention, once the nanny arrived and I had her inspect the ear closely under the light, even my poor Spanish was enough to help me understand that what she described seeing was less “tumor-esque” and more “pimple-esque”.
That was my original thought – it must be a pimple. (Sorry to keep grossing you all out with that word & image, but it’s central to my storyline here.) But a few hours alone, (pre-nanny inspection), without an adult to confirm visually what I suspected, left an opening in my mind to let in the monster that is… HYPOCHONDRIA.
I used to be worse. As a child, I suffered from various illnesses, including migraines, IBS, TMJ, and yes, even fake headaches and braces. And each time, I imagined something much, much worse was going on. Which was never the case.
Which makes me wonder…
Do we hypochondriacs think ourselves into a panic because, somewhere deep down, we believe in Reverse Intuition, which says, “That which we predict will therefore not occur”?
This type of thinking is does not exactly hold true for a deeply spiritual person, who believes our thoughts dictate the physical. And I do believe this… in theory. But… in practice…
I mean, look at Woody Allen. Typical hypochondriac – healthy as can be! And, obviously, worrying about the Worst Case Scenario has kept Woody in tip-top shape, so why should he change?
I certainly don’t want to “bring that type of energy into my life” (AKA the energy of a tumor – CHAS V’SHALOM!). But I also can’t seem to stop those sneaky little thoughts from popping into my head.
Plus I’ve always loved Woody Allen. I mean, did you see Midnight in Paris?
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Looks healthy to me!