Oh bloody hell.

So of course the week I take vacation I get both an irritating cold and my butt suddenly starts bleeding. AWESOME.  Just the kind of break I was hoping for. 

To take it back a few steps, we had some cold, rainy days in New York last week.  Then it shot right back up to 85 and sunny.  When I woke up that first nice day after the deluge, I had that signature "you're getting sick" scratch in the back of my throat.  It has stayed at about the same level of annoying as when it first started, but now I'm also sneezing and stuffed up and coughing a bit more aggressively.  The first day it happened I started popping vitamin C and taking my multi-vitamins.  I've been drinking a lot of cranberry juice and hot water with honey.  Since getting to my parents' place on Friday night I've been sucking down popsicles with a level of enthusiasm not seen since Linda Lovelace's heyday. 

On Saturday morning I went about my business as usual, but when I looked in the bowl I saw traces of red.  I tried to think of what I ate on Friday- iced coffee and a mini-donut, a lemon greek yogurt, a bag of veggie chips, a small mixed salad (greens, cucumber, cherry tomato, chic peas w/ vinaigrette) and that was pretty much it.  I was feeling crappy when I got home so I took a sip of cough syrup w/ codeine in it and took an hour nap before heading to the airport.  I wasn't hungry when I touched down, so I basically took my pills and went to bed (forgetting to take my cortifoam).  Nothing really struck me as being an instigator for rectal bleeding.  I suppose I did eat like a hog on Thursday night.  J and I went out to mark our three year anniversary (that's longer than some marriages if you ask me) and I chowed down a helping of crawfish tempura (that was a bit spicy, actually), a lobster salad sandwich, and a few bits of J's prawn and mushroom grits.  Maybe it was the spices in the crawfish tempura that upset things. 

At any rate, the pooh itself was in good shape, although I could tell not everything there had been properly digested.  I tried to make out what had made it through still semi-formed, but I got too grossed out before drawing any conclusions.  I will say this- there was also blood on the toilet paper, and my butt hole has been feeling pinchy lately, so maybe it's at least partially due to hemorrhoids?   Wishful thinking most likely.  I didn't poop again that day, and I haven't actually pooped today.  I tried about an hour ago, and although the bowl was empty there was red on the toilet paper, which pisses me off.  Oh, also of note (maybe) is that I've stopped taking those steroidal eye drops.  I feel like my whole immune system is just cartwheeling around on me- not severely enough to be a real problem, but just irritating enough to fuck up my day. On the bride side, I am at my folks' house and can get mommied to pieces for the rest of the week.