So right after returning from India, I got super sick. I mean like crazy, literally sleeping all day & all night for four days in a row, barely eating, cold/flu-like symtoms sick.
Don't worry, it wasn't anything I caught from travelling to India... more likely it was from travelling in general, after being stuck on planes for 20 hours in that dry non-circulating air, I was bound to come down with something.
As soon as I started to recover from that, I got my period (see yesterday's post). So there went nearly another week.
After being down for the count for two weeks, I haven't been feeling too hot... just kind of tired and achy. I've probably just been sitting at my desk for too long trying to get caught up on work.
Ok, so my purpose for sharing all this, is to illustrate why I've been taking a lot of over-the-counter medications lately. Specifically ibuprofen.
This has been my go-to-drug since I hit puberty in my pre-teens. During the week of my period, I'll often take three 200-mg pills every three hours for the first three days! Later, in my mid-twenties when I unknowingly suffered from a herniated disk causing me chronic pain and sciatic nerve damage for three years, I self-medicated nearly daily with ibuprofen.
Since having back-surgery in 2008, I feel like I've become more of a normal person again with my ibuprofen intake, though it's still my preferred drug of choice whenever I get period cramps, headaches, or other random pains.
Anywhoo, like I said above, I've been feeling pretty crummy for the past (nearly) three weeks or so, and B noticed me taking a lot of ibuprofen just to get through the days.
So he became concerned and started doing some simple googling and showed me this: http://www.conceiveonline.com/articles/which-medicines-could-affect-your-chances-getting-pregnant.
In this article, it states the following about ibuprofen:
"Common pain relievers such as the NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, which include Advil, Motrin, and Aleve) can sabotage conception, particularly if taken regularly. They may block production of prostaglandins, hormone-like chemicals that regulate inflammation and temperature. But they may also throw off the release of an egg each month. If you’re trying to get pregnant, stop taking ibuprofen from right before ovulation. 'But it’s perfectly alright to take it for menstrual cramps,' says Dr. Carson. Or try acetaminophen (Tylenol) instead."
So this was on Monday night... and of course after some additional quick googling on my part (I even found this one now while searching for an image for this post: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/sep/06/ibuprofen-warning-to-pregnant-women), I found enough chatter on this subject (none of it disproving it, though nothing very scholarly either), that I quit taking ibuprofen cold-turkey.
It's now Friday and I feel like I'm dying! So many aches & pains and I have to feel them all :(
But I'm in the midst of my fertile period, and of course, if I'm not taking ibuprofen right now and this happens to be the one and only time we've ever gotten pregnant, I'm going to have to blame everything on the loads of Advil I've been taking, lol!
When my period comes in a few weeks I'll load up again. This will just be something I cut out for a while during the rest of my non-menstruating days of the cycle... just in case.
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