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Gather round kids, it's story time
Dec. 17th, 2019 02:01 pmHome today sick with noro. Bad day yesterday, bad night, including two frustrating hours of sitting in an ER waiting room (in pain) and getting no help. I'd rather be miserable at home in my own warm bed than on a cold bench in a bright lobby - though to be fair they did bring me a heated blanket on request. Pygment was her usual awesome self. After two hours I felt better enough to walk steadily down the hall to the bathroom so I said fukkit and left.
This is far from my first rodeo, for which there is a story...
Once upon a time I went to undergrad at UPenn (aka Not Penn State). Student Health there was part of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP). At that time, and generally whenever I check, HUP is rated as one of the best teaching hospitals in the US. This means that you get a lot of older staff - who have seen it all and are pretty damned jaded - and a lot of younger staff. This dichotomy later will lead to the "two out of three doctors surveyed" incident, but that's a different story.
To tell this story I have to start Freshman year. Those of you who've known me in person know that I have a full beard. Back then, though, I did not. My beard (at age 18) was pretty scraggly, so I shaved. Often I shaved the sides to give myself what we called a "Klingon beard". Kind of like this dude - https://www.writeups.org/wp-content/uploads/Klingon-soldiers-b.jpg particularly since I had long hair at the time and there were several (original) Trek nerds in our social group.
Problem was that I was an absolute spaz with a razor. I'd nick myself on Day 1 and then on Day 2 I'd scrape it and make it worse. Scraggly or not, my beard grew pretty quickly. On a bad day I'd look like I had tried to go nose-to-nose with a feral bobcat.
Scroll forward to Sophomore year. By now I've learned that I can get all my classes stacked on M/W/F. This gave me two days mid-week to catch up on homework and assignments (leaving my weekends free for D&D and drinking - see "why do I never drink rum&coke"). This also meant that I only shaved three days a week, leaving four days for healing.
Then came November of that year; I distinctly remember I started feeling bad and left SCA Dance Practice early. By the time I made it to my dorm I headed straight for the bathroom and... just eww. In those days we didn't have the word "norovirus"; we called it the "running runs" because you were constantly running for the (gods help us shared dorm) bathroom in order to evacuate both ends.
After a few rounds of this it became clear that it wasn't just a one-time thing and I called Student Health, where the gent who answered... well, I could hear the grizzle in his voice. He told me to stay put, try to drink water or flat ginger ale, and come in when student health opened at 7. This is also where I learned that when your mouth tastes like metal you are really dehydrated.
So I did the shelter-in-place thing, didn't sleep at all, and dragged my exhausted ass down to SH before it opened. They had unlocked the outer airlock door but not the inner so I could at least stand in a foyer out of the cold. And I must have passed out briefly because I leaned up against the locked inner door. The next thing I know I am literally _falling_ into Student Health because the junior resident apparently decided I was giving him a hard time about being five minutes late and just unlocked the door and stepped back.
Once he realized his mistake he was all the apologetic and gave me many good drugs, including my first experience with a suppository. Turns out that if you want a medication delivered to the lower colon this is a super-effective way to do that. A couple hours later I was sufficiently hydrated and under control to drag my ass back to my dorm and pass out. I slept through most of Wednesday, waking up long enough to shower and drink a little water then go back to sleep. By Friday I was able to manage some Saltines and felt pretty good about that.
Then it was the weekend and by the time Monday rolled around again I looked in the mirror and I had a full week's worth of beard, which was actually pretty good and past the scraggly stage. I threw my razor in the trash and haven't shaved since.
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I hope you've enjoyed this story and I have a question for you. If you are the sort of person who kisses people who shave, does stubble bother you? I find it irritating as heck, but maybe it's a thing you get used to?
This is far from my first rodeo, for which there is a story...
Once upon a time I went to undergrad at UPenn (aka Not Penn State). Student Health there was part of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP). At that time, and generally whenever I check, HUP is rated as one of the best teaching hospitals in the US. This means that you get a lot of older staff - who have seen it all and are pretty damned jaded - and a lot of younger staff. This dichotomy later will lead to the "two out of three doctors surveyed" incident, but that's a different story.
To tell this story I have to start Freshman year. Those of you who've known me in person know that I have a full beard. Back then, though, I did not. My beard (at age 18) was pretty scraggly, so I shaved. Often I shaved the sides to give myself what we called a "Klingon beard". Kind of like this dude - https://www.writeups.org/wp-content/uploads/Klingon-soldiers-b.jpg particularly since I had long hair at the time and there were several (original) Trek nerds in our social group.
Problem was that I was an absolute spaz with a razor. I'd nick myself on Day 1 and then on Day 2 I'd scrape it and make it worse. Scraggly or not, my beard grew pretty quickly. On a bad day I'd look like I had tried to go nose-to-nose with a feral bobcat.
Scroll forward to Sophomore year. By now I've learned that I can get all my classes stacked on M/W/F. This gave me two days mid-week to catch up on homework and assignments (leaving my weekends free for D&D and drinking - see "why do I never drink rum&coke"). This also meant that I only shaved three days a week, leaving four days for healing.
Then came November of that year; I distinctly remember I started feeling bad and left SCA Dance Practice early. By the time I made it to my dorm I headed straight for the bathroom and... just eww. In those days we didn't have the word "norovirus"; we called it the "running runs" because you were constantly running for the (gods help us shared dorm) bathroom in order to evacuate both ends.
After a few rounds of this it became clear that it wasn't just a one-time thing and I called Student Health, where the gent who answered... well, I could hear the grizzle in his voice. He told me to stay put, try to drink water or flat ginger ale, and come in when student health opened at 7. This is also where I learned that when your mouth tastes like metal you are really dehydrated.
So I did the shelter-in-place thing, didn't sleep at all, and dragged my exhausted ass down to SH before it opened. They had unlocked the outer airlock door but not the inner so I could at least stand in a foyer out of the cold. And I must have passed out briefly because I leaned up against the locked inner door. The next thing I know I am literally _falling_ into Student Health because the junior resident apparently decided I was giving him a hard time about being five minutes late and just unlocked the door and stepped back.
Once he realized his mistake he was all the apologetic and gave me many good drugs, including my first experience with a suppository. Turns out that if you want a medication delivered to the lower colon this is a super-effective way to do that. A couple hours later I was sufficiently hydrated and under control to drag my ass back to my dorm and pass out. I slept through most of Wednesday, waking up long enough to shower and drink a little water then go back to sleep. By Friday I was able to manage some Saltines and felt pretty good about that.
Then it was the weekend and by the time Monday rolled around again I looked in the mirror and I had a full week's worth of beard, which was actually pretty good and past the scraggly stage. I threw my razor in the trash and haven't shaved since.
----------
I hope you've enjoyed this story and I have a question for you. If you are the sort of person who kisses people who shave, does stubble bother you? I find it irritating as heck, but maybe it's a thing you get used to?
