Every other week I am in my counselor’s office, and there seems to be something new that brings me to tears, which drives me crazy. I can’t figure out why I am crying so much. I mean yeah, I have experienced loss on a major scale in the last nine months – my sister, my friend, my uncle, moving states, losing my job, losing all of my doctors, losing my option for more surgeries – but I keep thinking that I should be adjusted by now. But reading this post by my fellow blogger reminds me that I keep experiencing loss and that I still have a sense of instability. Since my U of MN doctors insist that I don’t have Lyme, I have to go through the long process of getting set up through the NIH rare diseases unit and make arrangements through Vanderbilt University to be studied there, as they have locations designated throughout the country for patients to be screened. In the meantime, I have to continue with my treatments with my naturopath, even though I have NO IDEA if it’s the right thing to do.
In addition, I’ve been given the option of getting a TAP block in my abdomen with the hope that it will relieve some of the nerve pain that I’m having from being allergic to the drainage catheter from the shunt. The doc is going to numb nerves on both sides of my abdomen leading to my lower belly. The kicker? I have no idea if it’s going to affect my sexual functionality. And I’ve got a brand new boyfriend. And I really like said new boyfriend and I want to jump him every time I see him. And I don’t think it will be fair to lose what little functionality I do have, because who knows how much longer these good years of responsiveness are going to last? It’s asking a lot of a new boyfriend to possibly give up intimacy for an unknown period of time (forever???); I mean, I call him The Saint Paul, but Jesus H…I don’t know, is there something that is a step above sainthood? If I lose my ability to orgasm, that’s gonna take a LOT of mourning. Maybe some booze and mood stabilizers. I’m already stressed out about possibly taking out the shunt permanently because it’s clogged and I’m allergic to all of the shunts, which means that I may be stuck laying down forever and can’t be up for even an hour.
In closing: Send kittens and puppies and rainbows.
When people think of grief they often think of death, they don’t think about grieving over other significant losses. Those of us who have had major losses due to chronic illness know all too well that we grieve those losses.
The five stages of normal grief that were first proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book “On Death and Dying” are: Denial, Bargaining, Depression, Anger, and Acceptance. Kübler-Ross describes these stages as being progressive, you needed to resolve one stage before moving on to the next. This is no longer thought to be true. It is accepted that most people who have loss go through states of grief but it is not linear nor is it finite.
The The British Journal of Psychiatry Nov 2008, published a study on grief and acceptance. The authors note that “disbelief, yearning, anger and sadness may represent aspects of a single underlying psychological construct – grief.”…
I’ve been laying low for a few weeks. Actually, that isn’t quite right – I’ve had to put on makeup nearly every day and wear a bra and be polite and make sure my pants aren’t falling off of my ass every time my name is called and I stand up because of non-stop appointments and activities. Most of the time it’s exhausting because my brain is being smushed like people have sent over a few of their puppy-monkey-babies to sit on my head and bounce around a little. At the end of each day I’ve had very little energy to do much else than watch my TV boyfriends Jimmy Fallon, Trevor Noah and Larry Wilmore on Hulu.
My uncle’s memorial service was Monday. There was quite a large turnout – something in the neighborhood of 300 people, I think. It was lovely and sad, and especially tough to see pictures of my aunt and my dad on the slideshow that was run during the service, who preceded my uncle in death by 20 years. Every single one of us cousins on that side lost a parent at a very young age. Thankfully there were a few funny stories and pictures to break up the sadness.
About a month ago I went to a session at a health crisis center where a musician brought his guitar and we had a little singalong activity. It was nice to sing – it’s one of my favorite things to do – and I have a decent voice, and I met a woman who seemed to be fairly friendly. The thing about the crisis center is that people attend whether they have physical illnesses, mental illnesses, or both; this woman happens to have mental illnesses, though I didn’t know it when she started talking to me. She gave me her number and said she would be interested in getting together because she wanted to expand her friendship circle.
Well, I didn’t know it at the time, but “expand” really meant that she wanted to make A friend. One. Me.
I had new orders put in for nerve impingements in both my left shoulder and right hip, so I’m going to PT twice a week now. Besides that I have other appointments for counseling or additional doctor appointments at least once a week, including an EMG for my head and face tomorrow morning. I’ve still got the tremors going on in my legs from being upright so much.
I didn’t realize that the lady didn’t fully expect me to actually call her, or that I was the only one polite enough to give her the time of day. However, slowly as she cornered me on the phone day after day for a few hours at a time, she revealed she had some issues with obsession and stalking, including the fact that a man who attends her church has a restraining order out on her. At one point she told me that she thought that he was trying to be friends again; what did I think? I told her that he might have been polite, but she should keep her distance. I finally told her that I can’t talk on the phone every day. Now she texts me every day and asks if we can go and do stuff like shopping. I tell her every day that I have appointments and it’s really difficult for me to be running around all of the time. Now I’m at the point where I’m going to have to be firm and tell her that I just don’t have the energy or health to be her one and only friend. I’ll let y’all know if I come home to some rabbit stew and her standing in my bathtub with a knife.
I have been working on making the changes to my diet to make it anti-inflammatory, and that includes experimenting with ingredients. Today I made crispy chicken, which was breaded with garbanzo and fava bean flour (okay) and coconut flour brownies (eh), and I’ve determined that coconut flour and my esophagus do not mix. I’ve tried three different recipes that are coconut flour-based and they burn going down every time. I don’t think it’s a true allergy because I don’t get hives or asthma, but it’s still unpleasant enough to stop trying to make it work.
Four doctors now at the University of Minnesota have told me that they don’t think I have late stage Lyme, and they’re not quite sure what I have. No one can figure out why the hell I can lay down and make the CSF move away from wherever it’s pressing on my brain and I can open my eyes again. I talked to my PCP today about the possibility of getting my shunt removed completely since it’s not draining properly anyway and it’s just causing me pain now. It will probably be another six months before I will be able to go under the knife for that one since I first have to jump through the hoops for the pain doctor. I finally got the letter for the NIH Rare Diseases unit from my PCP and started that process tonight. Now I’m back on the rare disease boat.
Last, and most exciting:
I am no longer on OKCupid. I mean, yeah, sure, I was getting some really nutty stories to pass along (and I certainly haven’t told them all yet), but it’s because The Saint Paul really is worth it. The Saint Paul is close to my age, never married, no children, heart of gold, helpful, accommodating, matching sense of humor, curious, well-read and liberal. He supports my feminist stances and most importantly does not view my body as “his” space, as so many men still do with women. We had the best first through fifth dates, the last one involving him taking me to his favorite animal shelter so I could pet kitties. (I brought a shirt in a plastic baggie that I could change into so I wouldn’t contaminate my jacket on the way home.)
Stay tuned for further developments on the love front.
I think anyone who has been reading my blog for any amount of time knows that I believe in a marriage between the hard-hitting Western medicine and the holistic approach of Eastern medicine. I am open to trying a long-term approach to feeling better if the problem is nagging vs. one that takes me down swiftly and completely. Right now I feel like the fatigue and bad sleep are more of a nuisance because I have bigger and badder things going on.
The company Premier Bioceuticals has various products to support certain areas of life, and I tried both the FibroCane Daily supplements and the Serenitea tea.
First, the FibroCane Daily: The label states that it is formulated to help “quiet symptoms associated with pain, stress and fatigue.” For the short amount of time I was taking it, I did notice a boost in my overall energy. Almost halfway through my bottle I had to have the ingredients evaluated by my naturopath because my entire regimen was revamped after I received my Lyme diagnosis. The FibroCane Daily has all kinds of good things including vitamins B12, C and D, but I was going to be receiving therapeutic doses via my naturopath’s plan, so I had to discontinue it. Especially with vitamins that are fat-soluble (B and D) and not water-soluble (vitamin C), you have to make sure that you don’t take in too much – they can build up in your fat cells and create a health crisis on top of what you are already dealing with. The water-soluble vitamins like C can be flushed out of your system with the rest of your waste in your urine so it’s more difficult to overdose on those.
Here is a copy of the label:
The label is actually quite small in real life, so I had to request a digital copy so I could enlarge it for reading. Always consult a healthcare professional when you are adding to or changing your plan.
Second, the Serenitea: This is also a “FibroCane” product geared towards assisting to ease restlessness and promote relaxation. It states that it’s “Non-GMO, Organically Grown, Gluten Free, Caffeine Free.” This is an herb tea blend that includes holy basil, cardamom, chamomile, peppermint, rooibos, and even some stevia to sweeten it up for consumption. The best way to extract the most essence is to dunk a bag in about 8 ounces of boiling water, and then cover it and let it steep for 10 minutes. (Warning: Any tea left to steep for longer than recommended, whether it’s this product or any other brand, may result in a bitter taste – adios that bag when the time is up!)
The dietary changes I am making under great protest (no dairy, gluten, soy or sugar) have made me leery of anything that is supposed to be “supportive” to my system – because usually that means that it tastes like hair coloring chemicals or shoe leather to me. However, this tea is quite pleasant, and I very much appreciate the addition of the stevia to soften the taste of some of the herbs. It certainly is a nice way to wrap up the day, though I still tend to have squirrels romping through my brain – I guess there’s no tea for that yet!
It was such a beautiful day – partly cloudy, unseasonably warm. Such a beautiful day that our uncle’s soul could not be contained by the body that was failing, so he took his last breath at 9:00 a.m., sharp. He was never really one to sit still for very long anyway.
My brother called me last night. I had already taken my last dose of meds and had stumbled into my pajamas, when he said, “Chels, you need to get here. He’s here at the hospital and he’s not going to make it through the night.” I clawed out of my pajamas and hurriedly put my clothes back on, and then called my sister. I knew as soon as I heard her voice that she would not be able to get out of bed because she was sick as a dog. She was heartbroken and asked me to say goodbye for her.
Texting with my brother, I advised him that my cab was on its way, and he told me that our uncle was not responding. I started shaking. I tried to remember to put random things into my purse, including my phone charger and my favorite cough drops. I put on extra deodorant (though I knew I was fighting a losing battle on that one – I sweat like crazy when the fluid builds up in my brain like it has been for the last 9 months while I’m upright).
After what seemed like an eternity, but was really only about 20 minutes, the cab arrived. He asked me where I was going. I told him the facility. He asked me how to get there, because he had just moved to the area from Phoenix. Great. The blind leading the blind. Then on the way he had to stop for gas (but he kept the meter running, saying it was at a “reduced rate”). I couldn’t believe it. I was crying and trying to explain to him that I wasn’t sure if I would make it to the hospital on time. Then he started quizzing me on how old my uncle was and if he was sick for long. I’m not new, I know where this line of questioning leads: some stranger-danger jackass is going to tell me that he lived a long life (a week and a half short of reaching 65) and that if he was sick a long time, then I shouldn’t be sad.
But I am sad. You see, my uncle and I missed out on two decades of knowing each other. When he found out I was sick, he began slowly reaching out to me. But before that, we had had no contact. Twenty years ago, his brother – my dad – died, and as people do when they endure a major life event like that, we acted our worst. First, we fought over what Dad should wear to be buried. Whenever he wasn’t working, Dad was in either pajamas or very grubby outdoor clothes, and we kids and our step-mom said we wanted Dad to be buried in his (very nice) favorite pajamas. Our uncle put his foot down and said he should be buried in a 3-piece suit, because otherwise, what would their clients think? (Dad and our uncle along with their close friend owned a successful business.) I told him that the funeral wasn’t for the clients. Eventually we settled on the favorite pajama pants and a nice shirt.
Second, our uncle took me aside and told me, “I know I wasn’t very interested in you when you were growing up. I figured you didn’t really need me because your dad was so involved in your life. Now that he’s gone, if you ever need advice, you can come to me.” I was 22 at the time and already had been living away from home for about 5.5 years, so I felt as if he really missed the boat on being part of my life. Mostly I was hurt that he admitted what he thought about me. I was raw from dealing with the sudden loss of my dad and had no support like everyone else who was there and paired up like they were going on Noah’s Ark – no boyfriend and no spouse. I did what I had perfected long ago, and that was to shut down emotionally. 19 years have passed since we buried Dad and I moved around the country.
Slowly last year my uncle’s messages started to trickle in. He even made a donation to my YouCaring page to help me with expenses during my Magical Medical Mystery Tour. When he found out I was moving back to Minnesota, he asked if we could spend some time together. So the week after all of my belongings arrived and were still taking over my living room/bedroom, we squeezed a chair in between the boxes and the wall so that he could talk to me while I laid flat on the bed. I was mid-sentence in giving him a generic update on what was happening with me when he grabbed my hand and said while fighting back tears, “I’m sorry. I’m so happy to see you.”
Now that I’m 20 years older and have contemplated life, death and illness, it was all I needed to hear. I repeated his words back to him. He leaned over from the chair to hug me tight and we cried. It’s the crying that you do when you see life with such clarity and you know that your time is limited. It’s the crying that you do when you’re not afraid of death but you are afraid of not being able to make wrongs right before it’s time for you to shed your body. He had stage IV squamous cell carcinoma and didn’t know how long he had until he could no longer function. We managed to have a few more visits before Christmas; after Christmas, he developed pneumonia and was sentenced to bed rest and constant care by his new girlfriend.
Last night a group of people hovered around his hospital room, all red-eyed and occasionally sadly smiling over the sharing of memories. I thanked his girlfriend for taking such good care of him; she went home to rest. Eventually the visitors dwindled down until it was my brother and I, our cousin and his best friend, our uncle’s ex-wife and our uncle’s best friend/long-time business partner. My nighttime meds were kicking in and making me extremely sleepy and I desperately needed to lay down to take the pressure off of my brain, so someone very kindly set up a cot for me in the family waiting room. My brother opted to sleep in the chairs. Everyone else stayed in the room with our uncle. I figured that we would hear sometime in the night that our uncle had passed.
I woke up and stumbled to the community bathroom and tried to make myself presentable. My eye makeup was smeared to raccoon status. My deodorant indeed was a huge disappointment. I stopped pretending to care and instead made my way to our uncle’s room. Surprisingly, only the best friend was there watching over our uncle – my uncle’s son, his best friend and the ex-wife had gone home to change clothes and make sure the dog was taken care of. My brother was still asleep in the family room and so the best friend/business partner went to get coffee while I stayed at my uncle’s bedside.
I used my time with him to sing. Sometimes it was impossible to get the notes out because the knot in my throat strangled me with grief. He wasn’t conscious and was fighting to take in air while he slowly drowned in his lungs. It was painful to watch because our once super-fit uncle had fluid pooling in his abdomen and lungs, prompting him to keep his mouth gaping open while he worked just as hard to push the air out as he did to get the oxygen in. Singing was all I knew to do because I felt helpless – I was coming into this process late and didn’t know what his wishes were as far as pain control went.
When my brother and my uncle’s friend entered the room, they both were concerned about the amount of work it was taking for my uncle to try to get air into his lungs. He seemed to be clenching his fists a bit and his shoulders were also working themselves forward and back in an effort to try to take in oxygen. The three of us decided that we wanted him to be comfortable, so I found the nurse and asked her if we could get assistance with pain medication. We talked about the effect that upping his meds would have on him, which was mainly depressed breathing. I was concerned that our uncle’s son wouldn’t make it back to the hospital in time. My sister and her husband were also trying to get there to say goodbye. But we went ahead and had the orders changed so our uncle could receive his meds more frequently to aid him in dying in comfort. We didn’t know when that would happen, because he survived another night when he should have been gone, really.
The nurse gave him painkillers in his IV and some drops under his tongue; he seemed to settle down and labored less to take in air. I stepped out of the room for about three minutes to make a phone call. When I returned, his color had changed completely. Our uncle was taking in small, shallow breaths, and his skin had taken on an unnatural tone of yellow with underlying grey. My brother held one hand while I held the other, and our uncle’s friend stayed at his feet. We all told him we loved him, we all wanted him to feel no pain, and it was okay.
I watched the pulse at his neck as it slowly ebbed like a far-off ripple on a lake. Finally, I put my fingers to his carotid and confirmed there was no pulse. The friend went to the nurse’s station to call the nurse and resident into the room. Our uncle had left, to join his mom and dad, his brother and sister, and probably my sister, as well as countless other souls who were no longer caged by their bodies. No more pain, only flying free.
My dad (L) and my uncle (R), playing around with their mom’s pantyhose.
About a month ago, my fellow blogger Nikki (As I Live and Breathe, http://ilivebreathe.com/blab-archive/) and I started hosting sessions on Blab to talk about topics that concern us as patients with rare diseases and chronic diseases. We’ve had a lot of fun and have learned along the way what has worked and what hasn’t. Nikki also keeps seats on lockdown so we don’t have bullies show up on camera (though we can’t control trolls that come in and leave after they have said nasty, vile things). It’s pretty easy technology once you get the hang of it. I hope that you will consider joining us for our #SickadillyChat every Friday around 4 pm EST/1 pm PST (times sometimes change by an hour or two earlier if we have something that is going on – you can always subscribe to Nikki on Blab so you have the link for the show). If you are otherwise occupied, Nikki keeps a working list of our chats as they are recorded.
“Sickadilly,” according to the Urban Dictionary, means 1. To be fresh or poppin, or 2. To look beat. I mean, c’mon, we’re a little bit of both, aren’t we?
I consider us lucky to have the help of a few physician friends that Nikki has gotten to know well from her years of advocacy and education. Their enthusiasm and openness helps to keep us on the right track.
If you have ideas or topics you would like to cover, feel free to leave comments for Nikki or I. We also may approach people to join us, if they are able. We already have a running list of topics that we hope everyone will find interesting.
I’m watching “Morgan Spurlock: Inside Man” on Netflix, and as always, he puts together thoughtful pieces about the things we should be concerned about as humans and consumers. I mean, I really enjoyed the episode from Season 3, “Morgan the Matchmaker” because, duh,dating; but there are others that really speak to my sense of responsibility to the earth and to other humans.
For instance, also from Season 3, Morgan explores trash in Episode 6, “United States of Trash.” I try not to create loads of trash. I recycle tons of stuff. But as careful as I try to be, I still generate the equivalent of a Walgreen’s plastic shopping bag of trash every week. I learned something new. Specifically, you can take those glass jars with the metal closures and rubber ring around the lid for a tighter seal to the grocery store with you and have the meat department deposit the meat IN THERE instead of packaging it, even if it’s “just” the paper. Guess what? There’s also less of a chance of cross contamination if it’s in the sealed glass jar rather than in the paper (which you might insist on wrapping in another plastic bag). Also, if you wash your glass jars in food safe dish soap, you aren’t going to pick up chemicals (like you do in containers that are half or all plastic). What amazed me the most was that the family of 4 saved 40% off of their monthly grocery bill by bringing their own containers.
I can no longer drive and stash my reusable bags in my car, but I still make it a point to bring them with me when I do my own shopping. Any time we can leave a little less plastic in the world is best, but even I know I must get better about my own consumption.
Season 3, Episode 7 is “Honey Bee-Ware.” I remember when the big study was put out about how scientists were really excited about figuring out why hives were dying out in great numbers, and they firmly believed it was the result of these little mites that were invading the bodies of the bees and then effectively decapitating them. Something about zombie bees, blah blah blah.
Really, the concern should have been focused on pesticides and herbicides. Morgan interviewed a Harvard researcher who had indisputable proof that the deaths were related to the use of (trace) amounts of neonicotinoids. The popular product “Roundup” has glyphosate, also known to cause just as many problems after being researched. When the European Union found out about the results, they immediately banned those chemicals.
The problem with the U.S. is that we allow ourselves to be guinea pigs for everything – food, cosmetics, cleaning products. We assume that our responsibility and our concern falls only within the U.S. borders, and we’ll take care of “it” later after a number of decades have passed and we suddenly have a large percentage of the population sporting eyeballs from their ears or some weirdness like that. But our trash is in the world’s oceans. We eat poisoned food, use 110 chemicals a day in cosmetics ranging from toothpaste to eyeliner to soap, and we leave smears of chemicals around our kitchens and bathrooms that we would never dream of putting in our mouths, but that’s where they end up anyway.
I mean, think about it: Would you put that Chlorox wet wipe in your mouth and suck on it like a pacifier? I’m guessing not, but somehow you have convinced yourself that it’s safe putting it on every surface you can find. Nothing is really clean unless it’s been passed over by harsh chemicals, right?
<sigh> This brings up the whole discussion about superbugs, but I’m going to think about that one a little longer before I cover it.
My new diet to combat my Lyme bacterial infestation has to be all organic (no chemicals, hormones, artificial anything), and I can’t have any dairy, gluten, soy or sugar. The “Honey, Bee-Ware” episode reminded me that there is a non-profit group in the U.S. that is trying to counteract the stupidity of the FDA and EPA and make us smarter consumers. Now that I think of it, I like the idea of not dipping my apples in a bowl of Roundup before chowing down on them. I try to buy organic when I can. I have already changed all of my cleaning products to be environmentally-friendly, and 90% of my cosmetics have been changed as well (I just have one eyeliner that I have a hard time giving up just because it’s the only one for me that doesn’t smudge, which is important to me because it makes up for the eyelashes I’m missing).
I made these changes about eight years ago after I wrote a paper and gave a presentation on the Environmental Working Group‘s database “Skin Deep” (http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/). I still have a hard time convincing people that they can find great stuff for their teeth and skin and hair that isn’t going to give them cancer or screw up their hormones, but I keep trying.
I fell asleep last night somewhere between 8 and 10 pm, and that is as close of a window as I can get. As I said to one of my short bus drivers this week, it used to be a sign of weakness or a lack of social life if I ever changed to pajamas before midnight; now I think it’s a late night if I’m not comfy by 9:45 pm.
I’m turning into my parents. Maybe I even skipped a generation and went straight to my grandparents.
The trade-off is that I’m also not sleeping long or late. Most mornings now I wake up in agony at around 3 am because my right hip is burning (not at all fibromyalgia pain, so I’m thinking it’s the Lyme), or my left shoulder is angry. I had to sleep on my left side for three years because all of my surgeries used to be done on my right side, so I’ve got a nerve impingement that I’ve had to do shoulder rehab for twice already in four years. It’s not responding to the exercises I have memorized and it’s now doing a weird thing like it’s popping out of and then back into socket. I finally broke down and called my primary care doctor’s office yesterday to get set up with PT and pain management.
As I hunker down in the early morning with my cough drops and water and browse through my WP Reader, a thought strikes me: I no longer think in poetry. I can no longer bear to read poetry.
I think pain has rewired me so that I avoid the most descriptive and flowery words, or think of the significance of pauses and stanzas. I am in the economy car. I want the most efficient features possible for my money (aka time). I want to get in and get out.
And I want people to rethink their use of commas.
I hope that when I’m not being driven by pain, I can return to the imagery and thoughtfulness of poetry, because I know there is some fabulous stuff being put out there for all to read. I don’t want to forever close the door on that appreciation. (However, my stance on the proper usage of commas will never change.)
My ears perked up when I heard that this was a real product being marketed. They calmed down again when I realized that since Minnesota has the strictest laws in the country regarding medical marijuana that it’s likely I won’t get my hands on any until maybe a decade from now.
The problem: I have horrific abdominal pains because I’m having an allergic and autoimmune reaction to the drainage catheter of my shunt. I’ve had this pain since July 11, 2011, the day my very first shunt was implanted. The neurosurgeon saw the inflammation with his own eyes during one of my subsequent surgeries.
If it’s a good day, I can’t bear to have my abdomen pressed on. The last time my PCP prodded my abdomen, I had tears leaking out of my eyes – and not because I am conjuring the pain up. I also have issues with using the bathroom no matter what is coming out of me. I can only tell you that it feels as if someone has inserted a knife into any and all of my openings and is waving it around like it’s a #1 fan hand at a football game. If it’s a really bad day I also have waves of pain rolling over me. One time I was crossing the street to go back to my apartment and my sister was helping me carry a few items, and she heard me gasp as if I witnessed a really bad accident. Nope. I just was suddenly overtaken by the stabbing pains. And there’s just no way for me to predict when I’m going to get hit by an 11 pain (because according to Spinal Tap, that’s the loudest). Could be because I’m breathing.
The solution? I’ve been told I will not be given opioids because they would just mask the pain. (My answer is always yes, please, I would like to not have the pain.) Tylenol, Advil and naproxen sodium are child’s play. I’ve also been put on various anti-depressants and gabapentin. I’ve tried ice or heat. I’ve tried stretching out my hips. Meditation is probably good for something, but so far has not made me feel better about having the stabbing pains.
This product is being marketed for women with pelvic pain that is the result of endometriosis and/or menstrual cramps. I wouldn’t even have to consume something, just insert that capsule like a suppository for the kitty and then lie back and let it do its thing. If it can work for those issues, why can’t it work for my stabby-stabby pains? Maybe I wouldn’t dread going to the bathroom too. Sexual relations? I would say hell yes, it probably will give new meanings to “420-friendly” and “Netflix ‘n chill.” I can just see the Craigslist ad now: “Fun lady with a great sense of humor looking for my partner in crime to experiment with my totally legal 420 vaginal inserts. Bring some Funyuns, just in case.” http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2016/02/vaginal-marijuana-menstrual-cramps-really-work.html
The Sick and the Dating 