It's My Gallbladder

I thought I was making some kind of progress with getting better with my stomach problems but apparently not. I ended up in my local ER Wednesday night instead of the one a half an hour away. I wasn't exactly in the mood to deal with this crap again of waiting for hours after a blood draw to be seen. I managed to be taken back, have a blood draw, urine test and was examined all within 15 minutes. The nurse that was doing the examination had said that it was probably my gallbladder and ordered an ultrasound. The biggest thing is that I was given pain and nausea relief and I wasn't waiting for hours and not have anything done except a blood draw. The ultrasound had confirmed that my gallbladder was the issue. I was given scripts for pain, nausea and directions for a surgical consult. I made that consult before I left the ER. So Monday afternoon, I go for that consultation. The total time that I spent in the ER was probably 3 and a half hours. After complaining for around a year, I am happy to have some answers. My endocrinologist and my regular GP had pretty much decided that keeping an eye on it was the only thing to do.

The hard part is just managing the pain and nausea. Before the medication, I couldn't eat period without vicious amounts of pain that would last for hours. Now I can eat a little more but I am kind of limited and will be limited for a while on what I can and cannot have for a few weeks. It will be a very bland, low fat diet and I am not looking forward to that. But I am looking at a month with less than $75  coming into my bank account per week for about a month and I am seriously not looking forward for that part.

Monday is the day I will know if I am having surgery and what type of surgery. I probably will not be wearing any perfume if I have to go the surgical route but I am debating on wearing either no 19 extrait, no 22 extrait or Iris Silver Mist. I want something that is subtle but with a little bit of backbone. Dabbing make most perfumes more subtle. The only one that might be kind of comforting is no 22. I will have plenty of time later to wear what I want.
 

Northern Lights and Adventures in the ER

For the past year, I have been having stomach issues. At first, I thought it was initially because I am 40 and a good chunk of it happened before my time of the month so I wasn't too worried until the 10th.

October 9th is when I started to have some stomach troubles and didn't really think much of it at first. But after dinner, I started to have more issues and went to the ER shortly before 4 in the morning on the 10th. At first, I was taken back pretty quickly and the nurse did a blood draw, urine test, put an IV in and sent me back into the waiting room. Mind you, this is 4 in the morning and there were 2 other people and I thought that the wait wasn't going to be take too long to be seen by a doctor. Well, I was freaking wrong. I waited hours without being seen by a doctor. I went to see what exactly was going on and I was given the response of I was next in the in line but no time estimate on when I was going to be seen. At this point, I was starting to get kind of riled. I had been in the waiting room for a little over 4 hours at this point with no health professional checking to see if my pain levels were worse, same or lessened. This is an uncivilized hour on a Thursday morning with 1 or 2 other people in the waiting room. I think that one of them might have been homeless and just wanted a warm place to sleep for the night. My boss had said that there might have been more important patients to attend to than a stomach ache. But my retort was that it could be something incredibly serious like a ruptured gallbladder. I decided to say screw it and have them take my IV out and leave. I was feeling a bit better but my GI system still feels yucky. My only directions were that I make a follow up with my regular doctor. I am still pretty pissed. It's almost like I was being treated like I was drug seeking or I just wasn't important enough to be seen. I have already made a complaint with the patient advocate because I should not be waiting over 4 hours in a level 2 trauma center that was at a slow point patient wise. What if it is still serious? What if I can't wait until next week when my GP appointment is?

I was finally able to see the aurora borealis later on that day. I wasn't expecting much since I wasn't able to see them the last time they came to my neck of the woods in Ohio. This time, there was a mention of using a cellphone camera to capture it and that is what I did this time around. And this time, I managed to get a few pictures. They might not be as good as a professional photographer but I am going to post a few down below as well. The one up top is probable one of the best pictures that I took of the whole thing.

 

Prada Infusion de Vanille Review

 At this point, fall is here. I am not talking about a false fall. A false fall is were you get a few days were it is cool during the day and pretty chilly at night. But after those few days, summer comes back for one last hurrah. Since summer is gone, I have started craving some of my vanilla offerings.

I am picky about my vanilla perfumes. Many vanilla perfumes smell like a bakery, smell cheap or just generic. I remember the first two vanilla perfumes that I fell head over heels with. The long discontinued Havana Vanille and Spirituese Double Vanille. I love the both of them but Havana Vanille has been discontinued and stupid expensive if you find it online. SDV is still stupid expensive and will have to stick to decants with that one. Andy Tauer's Vanilla Flash and Tom Ford's Tobacco Vanille are wonderful as well. I did notice that I liked my vanilla perfumes to smell inedible. It might smell like vanilla but it's an inedible vanilla. But vanilla isn't a huge part of my collection.

Last month was my birthday and just about every place that I shop at was either giving a freebie or some kind of bargain. Ulta was giving me double points all month long along with a birthday gift, so I loaded up on things that I was running low on. Sephora was offering me an extra 250 points if I made an order of $25. I am not the biggest Sephora shopper but I made an exception and spent some cash and got myself a travel spray of Prada's Infusion de Vanille. I figured that since I love Infusion d'Iris, I would probably like the vanilla one. A travel spray was in my budget and I figured that if I didn't like it, I could either return it or find someone who did like it.

I will say that it is a vanilla perfume that falls into the inedible category and not in a good way. Havana Vanille and SDV fell into the same character of vanilla but there was something that made them stand out. Havanna Vanille had a rum soaked cigar vibe and SDV had a burnt vibe to it that I loved. Vanilla is something that Guerlain has always done well. Infusion de Vanille seemed to be a generic vanilla perfume with some floral stuff in the background. I did read some reviews on Sephora (I think but don't hold me to it) and I saw that some people said that this was a sexy perfume. My response was, "sexy, my ass!". If this is sexy than you must of set the bar below ground and you must think that Kiehl's Musk Blend is out of control slutty. Maybe I am too used to MKK and vintage BaV. I can think of other perfumes that can be considered sexy like Shalimar or Mitsouko. Shit, vintage no 5 is pretty damn sexy but I wouldn't call any vanilla dominant perfume sexy. Might be on the comforting side of things but not sexy. Infusion de Vanille is a vapid perfume geared for people who want to wear and buy perfume but don't want to put a lot of thought and effort into finding something better.

I will admit that the staying power of Infusion de Vanille is pretty good and it isn't one of those really loud perfumes. Infusion de Vanille is well blended but the whole thing doesn't really sit nicely on me and I am not a big fan of vanilla perfumes being called sexy where there are better perfumes out there that can claim the whole sexy title.