Laser Vagina! (SFW. No, really.) · 7:21pm Apr 10th, 2019
I try not to tell y'all about everything. In some ways, there's just too much. The day-to-day stresses of being the lone caregiver... no one wants to read about that every week. Even talking about the smaller problems too often would quickly become irritating. I don't want to drive people away and I never want anyone to feel like I'm begging.
But as with the transcendent moment of graveyard humor where my mother tried to call the police on me for false charges and forgot how to dial 911, every so often, the sewage flow of my life has a gold nugget drift by...
Let's take this in stages.
About two months ago, I purchased a home urinary tract infection test kit. This felt like a necessary expense, because she's very prone to UTIs (and BTW, if the cranberry tablets are doing anything, they're not exactly publicizing) and any infection spikes her dementia to terrifying levels. Even given that such home tests aren't exactly completely reliable, I still thought any potential advance warning was better than none. So I spent about $12.00 for three test strips, and waited to use them.
On March 29th, I took my mother to see her urologist: one of the physicians she's truly lucky to have, as he's very highly rated in the field. The visit went normally: a urine sample was taken and sent off to the lab, and she was scheduled to come back in a few months.
So... April 8th. This past Monday. This was a major day, because it was the day we were going to meet her Medicaid case manager. He was coming directly to the apartment, sent by the secondary insurance provider, and so making a good impression was sort of essential. And it also kicked off a fairly busy week: she would meet her new dentist on Tuesday, and Friday would have her back in the hospital for a minor procedure: a repeat of the vertebrae reinforcement and spinal jack installation from December, only at L1. (This was originally going to be Thursday, but got pushed back. I had already planned for an all-nighter in keeping her away from the refrigerator again: no food or drink before the anesthetic.) The week after that was Audiology...
April has been medical silly season. We've been seeing just about everyone. Her neurologist was on the 2nd, and we went to his more distant office because one of her old friends is living in a gated community in that area: drop in by appointment only. They haven't seen each other in nearly two years, we visited for about three hours, and... I didn't get a chance to warn her about the dementia.
*sigh*
She figured it out quickly enough, and took it well -- at least while we were still here. It helped that it wasn't the worst day.
But on the 8th, I was just prepping for the case manager's arrival. Writing down lists of medications and physicians, planning out questions. (No, the purchase of a therapy animal isn't covered.) And as I was doing so, my mother came up to me and asked if there was anything I needed to stuff into a small plastic food bag.
Remember: chicken in the cabinet. For whatever reason, putting things in strange places is a reliable sign that her dementia is starting to spike.
I called her attention to it, which did about as much good as you'd suspect. I also began to ask questions and when I asked about recent bathroom trips, we hit Bingo. She claimed she'd seen some blood in the toilet after urination and of course this is the first time she mentioned it in any form.
All right. Dementia patient. Not exactly a reliable witness. But it's a place to start, so out comes the home UTI kit, and guess what? It's showing a fairly strong positive.
I did not rush her to the ER. I called her primary doctor and asked if we could get any appointment before the close of business hours. It was just a urine sample and antibiotics: that shouldn't take too long. The doctor was able to see her in mid-afternoon, and so I waited for the case manager and hung on for dear life, because she needed to meet with him, cancelling might mean losing months, and I just had to hope the delay in reaching the doctor wasn't going to burn her.
Calculated risk, I guess. Assessment of the odds...
The meeting actually went fairly well, except for the part where she systematically refused just about all the help she would be entitled to: no home health aids, no visiting nurses, no daytime get-togethers with other patients in professional facilities. After all, why do any of that when I haven't died yet? (This does not permanently remove the option: it just means she won't take any of that now.) And I did ask about respite days: I need to give at least one month's notice, and it's either a care center or a live-in aid for that time. She already refused the live-in aid, because she was on a roll.
All right: the case manager will visit again in three months. To the hospital, and the urine sample is taken. As we need to wait for results, she's given a preemptive prescription for an antibiotic whose name shows up on the label as Nitrofur, which I immediately set aside for the worst Sonic OC ever. And home again.
The trip back isn't bad. She's more alert than she was earlier. She eats and drinks. She's just tired from the day, and winds up in bed at seven that evening. I make sure she takes her pills, and it isn't too long after that before I collapse. Of course, I'm the one with insomnia, and it hits hard. I'm stressed. Did we catch the infection in time? Was there an infection at all? The test isn't fully reliable... What if it's a bad one? Do I need to cancel the surgery? (I asked the doctor about that, was advised to keep it scheduled for now -- but she called the surgeon and told him what was going on.) How long can I keep this up...?
So I was up a few times. 12:30 a.m? She's still in bed. Same for 3:15. No way of knowing if she was up at all in between, but her position doesn't seem to have changed much.
Finally, back to sleep -- at 5:00 a.m, with the alarm set for 6:50 at the latest because I need to give her the morning meds. Get up again, and...
...well, now I know she never moved, as her bed is soaked with urine and because her straightening impulses had her fold and relocate the washable pad, it's through all the sheets and into the mattress. She's been unconscious for up to twelve hours.
It's not as bad as it was last time. I can wake her, get her to sit up. I just can't get her focused. I tell her we have to go into the ER, she agrees and starts to slump backwards, falling asleep again. A friend calls and the phone nearly falls out of her shaking hands. (I was hoping she would listen to her friend.) It's an hour of me mostly speaking very loudly in trying to keep her awake and direct her, she nearly passes out on the toilet, it takes too long to get her dresses and I only get her through the apartment stairwell by sitting her down and having her scoot on command while I manually adjust the position of her legs. It's two attempts to put in her in the car, and she falls asleep before I reach the first major road.
We can fast-forward through most of what happened next. (I'm a pro at ER's now. Here's the medication list, here's everything I observed in the last few days, here's the Medicaid card and oh, is that a tiny comfort...) She personally remembers none of it. Not having a fever (101.2F), not being unable to answer any questions, not the six hours in the emergency room and the additional two I spent there once she had an upstairs bed. Nothing. She doesn't remember her primary calling me, with great ironic timing, about an hour into the ER visit to tell me that urine sample had come back negative and so the home test had been a farce -- except that something was wrong...
(I went over to that office before leaving the hospital, updated them. Several subjects were discussed. Did you know that any general anesthesia has a chance to permanently spike dementia? I didn't. Until yesterday. )
And that brings us to today. She's responding to antibiotics, but the doctors don't know where the infection is, much less specifically what. (Her white cell count was way up: same for lactic acid.) She can't come home until she's clear and she's pretty much out of physical rehab days, so it has to be home -- unless a hospice agrees to take her for short-term care and yes, your reaction was probably the same one I had when I heard 'hospice'.
I was being briefed by the doctors when my phone rang. It was her urologist. The sample from the 29th had come back positive for bacteria. Start her on amoxicillin.
...would anyone in this circle of white coats like to borrow my phone?
So now they're talking. Maybe it'll help. And I stayed about two hours, got in the car, I didn't know if I could find the mindset to write and I had to try, but it felt like I was going to fail. I was just tired. Of everything. Of the infections, and there's been so many. It's the myasthenia gravis, you see. One of the meds used for that is also given to organ transplant recipients. Immune system goes way down. (Another may have, over several years, opened the door to dementia -- but you could say that about so many medicines.) It's another calculated risk: manage what's there and hope nothing else came in. Except that it just kept coming...
...oh, great. Phone again. Pull over before I get a ticket, and -- it's her urologist. He's worried about all of the urinary tract infections, and he has a procedure which may help. He wants to talk to her about it when she gets out, but he wants to tell me a few details first. For starters, it's not covered by medical insurance, so have cash ready. (This definitely means her secondary and may indicate Medicare as well.) It requires multiple sessions. But he's qualified to do it and he feels it'll help, so he wants to go laser vagina.
I'm going to repeat that: laser vagina.
...oh, there's the gold...
Before we go any further, I should establish that this is an actual medical procedure. In this case, he intends to use it for changing the acidity level of the internal environment. If it's more hostile to bacteria, then there should be less infections. It's a working theory. And I also have to verify that those are the two words he used, in that order.
However... when you take a weary, stressed-out writer and drop the term 'laser vagina' into the mind's hopper without preemptively explaining what was meant...
The car had already been pulled over. Small favors.
So what did you picture?
Personally, I started with, shall we say, one of the world's more awkward emission points for a superpower. Aiming may be slightly tricky, and try not to think about what this does to your costume. Y'all can come up with your own codenames.
Next up was an internal security system. We're gonna zap those UTIs out of existence! Nanobots! Blood cells armed with drones! 'Why is her dress glowing?' Because modern medicine, that's why!
Let's just say the next option involved terraforming. Except it didn't.
And of course, I'm not a clop writer -- but dear gawds, what could the site's best (and worst) do with that title? Laser Vagina! ...wait, maybe that's an OC. Or maybe it's the reason why Celestia doesn't receive gynecological exams any more: overly focused sunlight. Actually, it could be the world's best excuse for celibacy. So why aren't you taking it to the next level? Because you always hurt the ones you love and in this case, it hurts a lot.
Most people probably didn't remember Wild Cards. There's a character named Roulette, and her ace is to secrete a fatal poison. During sex. Guess where it emerges from. I smell an upgrade!
Oh, lest anyone forgot: when I go back to the hospital tomorrow, I am supposed to approach my own mother and ask her if she wants a laser vagina.
...wow.
So obviously I don't know if we're going through with this yet. I have enough reasons to fear a rescheduled surgery: I don't need to immediately add See Above to the list. However, her doctor feels it'll help, she's having a hard time saying 'no' to things, and -- maybe it would help. Less infections = better, and I doubt we can get the IVIG treatment which one of her friends wanted me to ask about.
But this is a golden opportunity. Not just for humor in the midst of chaos, but... well, let's face it: this has to be done. I don't even care if it gets any results or not. I just wanted it on the record that I did it.
My Ko-Fi tip goal is now 'Laser Vagina.'
So there you go. You may not want a laser vagina. You may not feel laser vaginas are something you ever want to personally experience. But now, your tips can help buy someone else their very own laser vagina.
Do it for the medicine.
Do it for the memes. (There may be memes.)
But most of it, do it for the lasers.
Laser Vagina.
An equal-opportunity employer.
We welcome former Stormtroopers.
(There's bacteria everywhere! You can't miss! Finally, you can't miss!)
No, your credit card/PayPal receipt will not say 'laser vagina'.
I also didn't put this up as a Patreon tier reward.
Yet.
I know what you mean, but now I can't help but imaigne a legion of tiny, self-replicating robotic grandmothers. I'm not sure what they'd do, and I'm frankly afraid to ask.
As for the pony end of things... well, I have seen a few bits of art of Twilight where magic is streaming out of every opening.
Best of luck with... well, everything. Whether or not they deploy the laser vagina. (And no, I'm not going to try to turn that into a Magic card.)
My first thought was that it sounds like the very 2019 upgrade to the glittery hooha (also sfw-no-really), for heroines who know better.
This legendary moment from Pokecap'n & The Goons marathon playthrough of Sonic '06 just took on new meaning.
I’m poor as a writer, so I’m not going to attempt anything... but that imagination of yours (and your small sample of ideas) sparked off mine, and is presenting multiple mostly pony related funny scenes to my mind.
I’m gonna gave weird dreams in about two hours when I go to sleep.
Hope the UTI clears itself, and they actually find what is wrong to clear that up. There’s already too much going on, about time some of those things cleared up.
Totally irrelevant, but they've been releasing new titles in the Wild Card series
for a couple of years now. I remember Roulette. She killed a guy named The Howler
who could knock down buildings with sound & he screamed when bit.
5042237
Please turn it into a Magic card. Do it for Estee’s mom.
Not much activity on the Ko-Fi page.
I blame europhotophobia.
5042263
I'm almost current: I have yet to read Texas Hold-'Em and some of the Tor one-chapter shorts. (Also, the character of Noel Matthews has taken the #1 slot on Those Who
NeedDeserve To Die Already.)Right: Roulette killed Howler under orders (and presumably still can't hear very well out of that one ear), and Tisianne wound up letting her go because the man had a tendency to think with his non-laser genitals. She died about two years later: one of Typhoid Croyd's victims, and the proof that the mutated viruses he was producing could infect those who'd been through the original.
Croyd is probably in the Top Ten for body count in the series. (Radical and the Nur might be fighting it out for second. Depending on the population of Takis, Blaise might have reached seven digits.)
5042281
One thing always bugged me about the series -the 90% fatality rate
Assuming 1,000,0000,000 cases over 70+ year
100,000,000 survivors
90,000,000 jokers
(81,000,000 Joker deuces, 8,100,000 minor ace/jokers (Like Peregrine)
900,000 joker aces)
9,100,000 deuces
810,000 minor aces (like the Harlem Hammer)
90,000 major Aces (like Croyd or Golden Boy)
Over 70+ years. Over the entire world.
Assume that maybe 1/2 those that survived the disease have since died
Am I the only person in the world that can do basic arithmetic?
900,000,000 dead?
That's more than abortion, cigarettes, & war combined (I think)
That's WAY too high a lethality rate
Well, I wrote a character whose superpower was shooting potatoes out of her ass, but I guess vagina is more convenient for aiming. Also, for male examples, I just got a flashback to Alan Quatermain's death in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the comic, not the movie with Sean Connery).
,,,
Yeah, I got nuthin' I can add to that.
Hah, well, I continue to be sorry about your continuing difficulties, but I'm glad you were able to find some humor there. :D
Good luck, though, of course.
5042289
Well, let's see. Drake initially took out his hometown and was used as a weapon at least once after that. Not a very large hometown, but given the followup... several thousand, minimum.
Radical was responsible for said followup and also coordinated terrorist attacks whenever he wasn't waging open warfare. I can easily see him at five digits, with a chance at six. However, 'living' is a question mark, and may largely depend on Mark's ability to avoid pharmaceuticals.
Tom's final attack on the Rox... based on what Theo said about the changes made to Ellis Island, the Rox probably didn't hold more than three thousand people: jokers and jumpers combined. Before the tidal wave hit, some of the jumpers had been executed in the pardon ploy, a number of residents had just run for it, and there had been deaths in earlier attacks: the fuel-air bomb had casualties. There's also the question of whether the Rox was actually there when the water crashed down. Remember, the implication was that Theo sacrificed himself to pull the whole thing into the dreamtime, and we're shown that Charon is still running a ferry service to somewhere. Tom likely blames himself for those deaths, but he may have brought down the hammer on an empty house.
Croyd has a storied criminal history and has worked as a soldier at least once. He's always been more towards a thief than hitman, but he gets way out of control when the paranoia kicks in on his use of uppers and combines with his sleep deprivation for a psychosis combo pack. I'd guess that he's probably killed a dozen or more people deliberately, but the majority of those might have been trying to kill him.
The real numbers come in during the Typhoid Croyd stage. None of those deaths were deliberate -- he never realized what he was doing -- but the mutated virus had the same survival rate at the original. He didn't quite cause a new Wild Card Day, but given the number of contacts he made, areas passed through added to spores possibly laid down... a few thousand may be fair, and spores would mean that count is still going up.
Due to age and activity, Croyd probably has the longest rap sheet -- but vigilante activity means the police might be more interested in finding Neil.
(Then again, Neil's probably retired by now. He'd be going into his 60s.)
OC? She’s a gynaecologist with a light touch... (Oh, that’s bad.)
Why do Crystal ponies make love in the dark? Because if the light hits their genitalia in the wrong spot... (I’m a terrible person.)
“Twilight, why are you limping?”
“Oh, yet another side effect of alicornhood that Celestia neglected to mention.”
“That looks like a burn. How did you singe your hoof?”
“I really don’t want to talk about it.”
(I’m getting sent to the moon for that.)
On a serious note, good luck. If it helps, the ridiculousness of the procedure’s name is irrelevant. My best wishes to you and your mother.
5042289
I'd have to look at where your original numbers came from (and suspect it's the Black Trump arc), but I can factor in one thing here: once the virus writes itself into the host as an extra gene, the majority of the next generation's deaths come during childbirth. It's noted during the series that the stress of delivery is often enough to turn a card, and Tisianne's said that a number of fatalities occur without visible transformation: the victim just drops. So some of that, especially from latents, would be masked as stillbirths -- and parents who have fully turned cards know how bad the odds are.
(There's also a number of deaths pre-birth: fetuses that turn into non-viable organisms.)
One thing the Black Trump arc did was make it clear how deadly the virus will be several generations down the line. Science provides the chance to pick and choose fertilized eggs -- but that technology had better be everywhere.
5042330
The 90% fatality rate was in book 1
The 1 billion number was just a guess. Pick your own number,
but the smaller the number the fewer aces & jokers
The USA has about 6% the worlds population, so assuming 45,000,000 living Jokers worldwide
That gives about 2.7 million living in the USA & maybe a million in Jokertown in NY.
(Fewer than Asian Americans)
Assuming 100,000,000 over 70 years, that gives 100,000 in Jokertown
& the way they talk about it, I don't see Jokertown as much smaller than that.
it's still more than cigarettes.
I'm counting the Turtle smashing the bridge to stop the Wild Hunt
& assuming that when he created the tidal wave, the slosh back was also highly destructive
5042344
I forgot about the bridge... (I need to replace my copy of #11.)
Jokertown occupies the same space as the Bowery, but population numbers for the real are hard to come by. However, we can backtrack a little. Jokertown is mostly served by one police precinct. There are thirty-three precincts in Manhattan, for a population of about 1,650,000. So it's fair to say that assuming average population density, Jokertown has about 50,000 residents, and the vast majority of those will be jokers. (Not all. There's some nat families who never moved plus people trying to take advantage of lower rent, and it's possible for jokers to have a latent or visible-nat birth, along with a few aces.) It's been noted that a lot of jokers from the rest of the country will migrate to Jokertown for some degree of safely in numbers (although a lot of large cities have their own little districts), so the majority of American jokers are in a fairly small area. Some small-town tourists have never seen a virus victim, or just have that one person at home whose cat tail is almost tolerated.
Estimated direct viral deaths from the initial spore distribution over Manhattan were capped around 10,000. Other initial outbreaks followed the trade winds, and then the new gene went into the population. Globally, direct deaths from the first wave were probably a million or so: remember, the spores petered out after a while, resulting in some areas (Russia, Japan) barely showing any initial manifests.
Beyond that, I'd have to start speed-scanning the Black Queen arc: they did talk about some yearly numbers for mid-90s cards.
5042237
Well, if you shine a really bright flashlight in your mouth, you can make your eyes glow. I'm sure with enough light, you could get it to come out the other end. You might cook half your organs in the process, and the light wouldn't be collimated or monochromatic when it emerged, but I guess if you were desperate enough, you could do it.
Amazing how it is just called laser vagina and not some long string of incomprehensible medical terms that just equal out to laser vagina anyway.
I'm glad you could find some levity in your circumstances and that the Medicare meeting went as well as it could have. I really hope things move forward and reach a better place for y'all. Good luck with everything.
Sounds like one of those things you find in a footnote somewhere deep in a Shadowrun sourcebook to me.
I'm definitely picturing Discord hauling Celestia over one shoulder (insert several cake jokes) and aiming with a leg ala the canterlot wedding Twigun.
Well, nothing like a little light reproductive humor to diffuse a situation?
I'm sorry, I had to...
5042237
Make cookies of course!
It’s canon that lasers can come out of one end of ponies.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/5/17/327563.gif
So why not the other end?
Also, in case you haven’t seen this, it’s good for a laugh.
Also also I am very disappointed that my credit card receipt won’t say “Laser Vagina.” Because if it did, that’s the kind of credit card statement I’d frame.
I can't say your update journals have ever inspired laughter before. I hope it was cathartic, and I hope this works out. :)
I would love to see 'Laser Vagina' show up on my credit card statement just to see the look on my banker's face.
5042402
you reminded me of this video, especially #3 on the list:
5042429
Man, I loved the Sheepinator.
And Mr. Toots . . . okay, that’s just awesome. I’m going to have to remember that for the next silly fic I write.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2016/7/17/1203044.jpeg
The title makes me think of the final battle with the Moon Amazons in Black Dynamite season 1, episode 4, "A Crisis for Christmas or The Dark Side of the Dark Side of the Moon."
I just sent a little bit your way, and BTW, it's general purpose. If you decide that the treatment isn't the right call, you should hang on to it.
Also, it can be sung to the melody of "Waltzing Matilda."
Well... at least it would be guaranteed coherent...
5042320
By bizarre coincidence, a comedy fic with a similar premise recently came to my attention:
"No Magic Carpets". I'm told that fire is involved at one point.(NMC has gone from my "comedy to-read" queue to my "I want that time back" folder, unfortunately. Your quoted micro-fic has much better pacing and delivery.)
On a more serious note: Welcome to what sounds like borderline depression. This is something to take seriously. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one worried about you.
Do you have a fallback plan for what happens when you're no longer able to take care of her yourself?
Are there readers here who have actually been in a similar caregiver situation, who might be able to give advice? (I haven't, and spent most of my life outside the US, so I don't have the background to do so.)
Estee I applaud the care and devotion you show to your mom. Despite all the hardships the two of you have gone (and still are going) through, you can still stay positive and see the humour in things. You are a wonderful human being and I sincerely wish that there were more people in the world like you. I wish you both the best.
5042420
Kickstarters these days...
I've actually seen artwork of a robot girl firing that sort of weapon. A similar position to a contortionist firing a bow with her feet was involved.
Luckily I didn't keep it.
Labial point-defense cannon.
Atomic G-spot.
Clitoral artillery.
Ovarian minefield.
Huh, I guess I have a slightly less bizarre imagination than most here. My first thought was "dementia-induced poetry description of what a UTI feels like."
5042598
I’m still laughing about this.
5042598
5047799
Also Baby Beluga.