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Off To A Bad Start
Jan. 8th, 2009 11:33 amToday is an electrolysis day. I'm off to London to see Sara Thomas for half an hour's work on my face, breasts and one hair which has popped up in the area I want my surgical cosmetic revision in. This is currently on hold until I can remove the small number (five) of hairs that used to be there. Unfortunately electrolysis only kills hairs when they're in their "anagen phase", which is when they're actively growing. You can't tell if a hair is an anagen hair until it's been plucked. If you want to do an experiment, pluck a few hairs - notice that some have a sort of bulb and sheath on the end. Those are (were) the anagen hairs. All methods of hair removal can only kill the follicle when it's in this stage of its cycle.
So far, of the five, we've got two in the anagen phase. I'm hoping today will be a lucky strike, but so far today has not gone exactly to plan.
I was aiming to catch the 11:15 to Kings Cross, where I transfer to the Tube for half an hour, and then walk the last mile to Sara's house. The 11:15 is an express train which gets in at about noon, and means I arrive at Sara's for about 13:00, which gives me an hour for the EMLA anaesthetic cream to numb things. EMLA by itself isn't enough, I need pain relief too, so I take painkillers just before one.
Everything was fine, until I realise that it was 11:10, I was about to enter the station, and my network railcard expired on January 2nd. There was no way I could renew it in five minutes, so I'd have to pay the full off-peak fare today (which has just gone up to 20 pounds - ouch).
Anyway, I gritted my teeth, lamented not having left the house earlier so that I'd had time to renew, and walked through the ticket barriers. Then I stopped.
"Oh crap!", I said.
"Crap! Crap! Crap!"
"Is there something wrong, madam?" asks the man staffing the ticket barriers.
"I've forgot something", I say. Specifically, I've forgotten my laptop bag. I quickly mull my options - it's 11:13. Despite rumours to the contrary, I do not wither and die if separated from my beloved and rather lived in (where "lived in" includes "sat on while open", the screen hinge has never quite been the same since, and I'm sure it never used to open to that angle) MacBook Pro for more than a few hours. Going without it would not be a problem.
But the laptop bag has my painkillers in. OK, not a problem, I can buy some Paramol from a pharmacy in London - I pass several. Paramol is, I believe, the strongest non-prescription painkiller available in this country, with each tablet containing 500mg of paracetamol and something like 7mg of dihydrocodeine. It's good stuff.
But there's that one hair on my clitoral hood, and that's going to hurt like a bastard (technical term). I'm probably going to sound like I have a drugs problem hee, but for this, I want what's in my laptop bag - co-dydramol, which I have on prescription thanks to my obliging GP ("Can I have some co-dydramol please?" "Have you had it before?" "Yes" "OK then, here's a prescription"), and diclofenac, 50mg, which I have left over from my sinus surgery in September. Combining the two is possibly not recommended, but the effect is truly awesome in its potency, and is the closest thing I've experienced to morphine, which I was given immediately after SRS (and which I actually found very unpleasant).
Thinks, going back to get them will definitely make me miss my train, which means I'll arrive after 1, which means the EMLA won't have as long to work, but I can't face what's to come without the rather substantial pain relief that's sitting in my hall. Decision made.
"Can you let me out and back in in a few minutes, please?" He says that he can.
So I'm currently sat on the 11:26 stopping service, trundling through the snow-covered rolling fields of Hertfordshire in the mist (it's very pretty), instead of slowing down for London Kings Cross, where I won't be for at least another 25 minutes. If I have good luck with the tube connection at the other end, I might be able to make it to Sara's for just after quarter past one. Wish me luck!
ETA: We've just stopped at Hitchin station and a guy got on, cast a derisive gaze over everyone else in the carriage and went and sat in First Class. Dear snob - first class exists on these trains so that you can pay extra for the chance of actually getting a seat at rush hour. There's no more legroom, and the seat covers are a different colour. Paying twice as much as the rest of us to use it on a half empty lunchtime train doesn't make you better than the rest of us. It makes you a sucker. Hope that helps.
(OK, he may be coming back at rush hour, which would make him less of a sucker, but he still doesn't need to be such an arse about it).
So far, of the five, we've got two in the anagen phase. I'm hoping today will be a lucky strike, but so far today has not gone exactly to plan.
I was aiming to catch the 11:15 to Kings Cross, where I transfer to the Tube for half an hour, and then walk the last mile to Sara's house. The 11:15 is an express train which gets in at about noon, and means I arrive at Sara's for about 13:00, which gives me an hour for the EMLA anaesthetic cream to numb things. EMLA by itself isn't enough, I need pain relief too, so I take painkillers just before one.
Everything was fine, until I realise that it was 11:10, I was about to enter the station, and my network railcard expired on January 2nd. There was no way I could renew it in five minutes, so I'd have to pay the full off-peak fare today (which has just gone up to 20 pounds - ouch).
Anyway, I gritted my teeth, lamented not having left the house earlier so that I'd had time to renew, and walked through the ticket barriers. Then I stopped.
"Oh crap!", I said.
"Crap! Crap! Crap!"
"Is there something wrong, madam?" asks the man staffing the ticket barriers.
"I've forgot something", I say. Specifically, I've forgotten my laptop bag. I quickly mull my options - it's 11:13. Despite rumours to the contrary, I do not wither and die if separated from my beloved and rather lived in (where "lived in" includes "sat on while open", the screen hinge has never quite been the same since, and I'm sure it never used to open to that angle) MacBook Pro for more than a few hours. Going without it would not be a problem.
But the laptop bag has my painkillers in. OK, not a problem, I can buy some Paramol from a pharmacy in London - I pass several. Paramol is, I believe, the strongest non-prescription painkiller available in this country, with each tablet containing 500mg of paracetamol and something like 7mg of dihydrocodeine. It's good stuff.
But there's that one hair on my clitoral hood, and that's going to hurt like a bastard (technical term). I'm probably going to sound like I have a drugs problem hee, but for this, I want what's in my laptop bag - co-dydramol, which I have on prescription thanks to my obliging GP ("Can I have some co-dydramol please?" "Have you had it before?" "Yes" "OK then, here's a prescription"), and diclofenac, 50mg, which I have left over from my sinus surgery in September. Combining the two is possibly not recommended, but the effect is truly awesome in its potency, and is the closest thing I've experienced to morphine, which I was given immediately after SRS (and which I actually found very unpleasant).
Thinks, going back to get them will definitely make me miss my train, which means I'll arrive after 1, which means the EMLA won't have as long to work, but I can't face what's to come without the rather substantial pain relief that's sitting in my hall. Decision made.
"Can you let me out and back in in a few minutes, please?" He says that he can.
So I'm currently sat on the 11:26 stopping service, trundling through the snow-covered rolling fields of Hertfordshire in the mist (it's very pretty), instead of slowing down for London Kings Cross, where I won't be for at least another 25 minutes. If I have good luck with the tube connection at the other end, I might be able to make it to Sara's for just after quarter past one. Wish me luck!
ETA: We've just stopped at Hitchin station and a guy got on, cast a derisive gaze over everyone else in the carriage and went and sat in First Class. Dear snob - first class exists on these trains so that you can pay extra for the chance of actually getting a seat at rush hour. There's no more legroom, and the seat covers are a different colour. Paying twice as much as the rest of us to use it on a half empty lunchtime train doesn't make you better than the rest of us. It makes you a sucker. Hope that helps.
(OK, he may be coming back at rush hour, which would make him less of a sucker, but he still doesn't need to be such an arse about it).
