This post contains waaaaaaaay TMI

In order to blog about the day I had, I'm going to have to write about all kinds of stuff you never wanted to know about me, so before you read any further, be warned. This is also probably going to be a huge marathon post, so be warned about that too.

So my day started at 8:30 with some tapping on my leg by Akinori. I thought he was waking me up because I told him I had to go the doctor this morning, and if you don't have an appointment, which I didn't, you have to be there between 8:30 and 9:30. But no, he was waking me up to ask if it was okay to take the car to his friend's house to drop something off before his friend went to work. (Akinori randomly had the day off today.) We had a 15 minute discussion about why this arrangement was not going to work and why couldn't he take whatever it was to said friend's workplace later in the day after I came back from the doctor. I swear, I do not get my husband's train of thought sometimes.

* Begin TMI *
So I finally get out of the house at 9:15. Good thing the doctor is 5 minutes away. So the doctor I needed to see is the doctor every woman I know dreads, the gynecologist. About two weeks ago something out of the ordinary started going on in my nether region, which I naively thought might have been a result of the combination of sitting in front of the computer for hours on end every day working on that monster translation project and wearing what my husband likes to call, fundoshi (what sumo wrestlers wear) for underwear. (See, already TMI. I'm sure you really did not want to know what kind of underwear I wear.) So I made hub take a look one night, and he was like "it looks fine, this is making me horny". Needless to say I was not in the mood to relieve his problem as mine was a little more serious. And I mean really, I can understand looking at a naked woman and getting turned on, but looking straight on at the birth canal? Not so sexy, if you ask me. My husband is just weird. So I took a look with a strategically placed mirror and things definitely did not look okay. They looked red and there was a bump.

Bumps scare me because I am an HPV carrier. In my post about how I have changed over the last 12 years I mentioned that I had given up the party girl lifestyle. Well, I was a party girl well before I came to Japan, well before I was out of high school actually, and I learned a lot of lessons the hard way. One of them being about the use of condoms. I'm really lucky I only walked away with a case of genital warts and nothing worse, but when I was diagnosed with it at the age of 18, the summer before going away to uni, I was devastated. Lesson learned though! (Although that didn't stop me from being more promiscuous than I should have been, it just taught me to always carry a condom. The lesson in promiscuity came awhile later.) I haven't had an outbreak since I was probably about 20 or 21, but I had to have full on surgery with my last outbreak so the thought of warts coming back always freaks me out. Instead I get polyps every once in a while, and I had a pre-cancerous one a little while back so I have to be very careful about making sure I get biannual pap smears, something I haven't done since giving birth. Hence the worry.

I wanted to time my visit so that the doctor who saw me during my pregnancy would be the one to examine me, since he's already been there and done that. All the doctors at the clinic take turns doing maternity exams and gynecological exams but it's mostly the head doctor who does the gynecological exams and he's about 104 and just makes me uncomfortable, so of course it was him who happened to be there this morning due to some schedule shifts. Arrgh! So I go in and explain all my symptoms to a nurse after waiting for an hour. She assures me it has nothing to do with the type of underwear I wear. Silly me. But wouldn't it be nice if that were the cause and everything would go back to normal if I made a slight wardrobe change? So then the doctor sees me and before he exams me he says "Sounds like herpes." WHAAAAAATTTT???!! So he exams me, and yes, definitely herpes, and I'm going to prescribe this medicine, and you caught it very quick, this is nothing, and blah, blah, blah... All I'm thinking is, how did this happen? Is Akinori cheating on me? Did he have a cold sore the last time we got friendly? He better have had a cold sore or I'm going to kill him.

So I'm in a bit of a dumb stupor trying to wrap my head around this news when the nurse calls me back in to explain the medicine. And I just ask her point blank, "herpes is transmitted sexually, right?" You would think for someone who has contracted an STD before I would have a little more knowledge of how they work. But really, how can they just throw a diagnosis like that at you, without any explanation at all of how it manifests itself? So the nurse then explained that even if you've had chicken pox before then basically you carry the virus which can produce herpes sores, but yes, it can be transmitted sexually, so make sure your husband gets checked out too. Great, thanks for alleviating my worries. Which is it, chicken pox or sex?? And now I'm wondering, is this nurse thinking, "poor foreign girl, came to this hick town, and all for a cheating husband." OR is she thinking "dirty foreigner, can't keep your pants on, even in a town so small everyone knows your every move, and now you've probably gone and infected your husband. You and all your dirty foreign friends should be deported." And does everyone else in the waiting room know what is going on in my nether region too? It's probably written all over my face now.

I called Akinori as soon as I got back to the car and asked him if he had any cold sores recently, and he said he didn't. Then I told him what the diagnosis was, and he swore up and down, left and right and standing backward on his head on his grandmother's grave that he has not been with anyone else since we met. In my heart, I knew this was true even before I asked him, and I don't doubt that he's not lying to me. He's really not the type of person to be unfaithful, and if I had any doubts about that I wouldn't have married him in the first place. I've dated cheaters before, and one of the reasons I married Akinori was because he showed absolutely no resemblance to them whatsoever. We spent the entire dating period of our relationship living 4 hours apart and I never once doubted his faithfulness. Now we live together, and I'm going to start? It just doesn't make sense.

We both agreed that it was a good idea for him to get checked out too though so he called the Red Cross hospital, and the nurse he spoke to on the phone explained things a little better. Pretty much everyone carries the herpes virus (this I knew), and it can manifest itself in cold sores when your body is rundown and tired, or in other places that are prone to attract bacteria, ahem. I think lightbulbs clicked on in both our heads, considering I was hospitalized with mastitis last month in the middle of the monster translation project, and I was living on 4 hours of sleep a night for a month. Rundown may be a bit of an understatement.

At first Akinori was ready to run out the door and get checked out today, but then decided that he had some time, since we obviously can't get friendly again until my symptoms subside, there's no immediate rush, as in it has to be done today. It can wait until tomorrow or a little later this week. So once I stopped feeling sorry for myself, I decided that it was time we got off our asses and actually did the cleaning that we've been saying we're going to for the last 3 weeks or more since we were both home on this random weekday.

* End TMI *
* Begin boring stuff *

We both had our individual projects, and of course Sara came with me, so Akinori was completely unfettered in doing what he had to get done, and yet somehow, his task remains incomplete. I purposely took Sara and closed us up in her room (since my task was tidying up her unused bedroom that has all of my clothing in it) so that he wouldn't feel like I was watching over him and nagging him, because I know he hates that and gets annoyed and then acts like a child and pouts and then nothing gets done. But it doesn't seem like that much more gets done if I'm not watching over him so I'm not sure which is the lesser of two evils.

Although it didn't look like I was doing much in Akinori's eyes either, since every time he opened the door to ask me a question I was half naked or wearing something different as I was trying to go through all of my clothes and decide what needs to go and what can stay. I have done this twice now in the past year and I still have too many clothes that I don't wear half of.

Now I'm faced with a new, albeit happy, dilemma. I have some clothes that are just old. Like ripped t-shirts that I've had since high school that have some sort of sentimental value, but really it's time to get rid of them, and I have to finally put them in the "toss" pile. But then I have some clothes that I LOVE, but they don't fit anymore because they are too big. Believe me, I would much rather have them too big than too small, and I am proud to say I am no longer the owner of any clothing that is too small on me, but at least half my wardrobe is too big on me. I hesitate to give some of this stuff away or toss it because I do plan on getting pregnant again, and hopefully I can wear this stuff then. Then of course there are all my partying outfits. How much do you want to bet I will never have occasion to wear a pair of leather pants ever again? (Nevermind that they are way too big on me now, so if I did wear them it would be as maternity pants. Ever see a pregnant woman in leather pants - in Nagano? If anyone wants a pair of size 14 black leather pants, they're all yours!) And all of my cleavage revealing tops. Thanks to breastfeeding, I don't even have any cleavage anymore. (In fact I have the nastiest shriveled boobs in the world, and it makes me very sad - please tell me future pregnancies will bring them back to life, if only for a little while.) I don't discount the fact that I may gain weight again in the future, but I don't want that to be a reason for me to hang onto bigger sized clothing. If I know bigger clothes are available to me, I won't be as motivated to take action when clothes start getting tight. So for right now, there is the "toss" pile, the "keep" pile, the "give-away" pile and the "possible future maternity wear" pile.

* End boring stuff *

Wow, this post has really been all over the place and chock full of shit you really probably never wanted to know about me, but if you've read this far, now you do.