I am a little bit in love with Dr. House. If you don't watch House, MD, you may not know about the scruffy curmudgeonly genius who, despite serious anti-social tendencies, has a wit and brilliance unsurpassed on television. The only character on TV I appreciate more is Walter Bishop on Fringe.
House always refers to pregnancy as a parasitic infection. And the reasons for that, while seemingly shocking for shock value, are disturbingly correct....
A parasite, by definition, is an organism that has a symbiotic relationship with a host that it benefits from at the cost of the host.
HOW, I ask you, then, is a baby NOT a parasite?
For example, I do not throw up. I will lie immobile in my bed, moving only to chew a tums or sip a gingerale to avoid throwing up. I'd rather die. Yet the moment the sperm hits the egg, the parasitic infection that results sends my head into the toilet daily, hourly, sometimes even several times in an hour for months on end. Some "experts" will claim that after the hcg hormone peaks around week 14 that the symptoms of morning sickness should dissipate.... they are big fat lying liars who lie. I tell you this with the confidence of someone who in her last pregnancy even continued throwing up AFTER childbirth.
Second example: heartburn. Now, one might assume that since I am so distressingly fat according to the medical community that food and I would be best friends. Plus, if you read my lasy blog entry, then you'd know I like to cook. However, during pregnancy food and I are arch enemies. I can get heartburn without even eating food. I'm at the point now where I can actually GET heartburn from antacids. Again, I have nobody to blame but the uterine parasite.
Third example: The parasite MOVES with a will of its own. She's big enough now that all the somersaults and judo moves she occupies herself with are able to even be felt by the outside world, should I like you enough to allow you to touch my belly. How is this at my expense? Well, for one thing, it's distracting. And then when you consider that it's an ENTIRE LIVING BEING currently being housed WITHIN MY BODY, the fact that you can feel it move is entirely freaky while being admittedly cool.
Fourth, the removal of the parasite is the only known cure for two medical conditions: pregnancy and pre-exlampsia. Until the parasite is removed, you're pregnant and you can't unpregnant without disconnecting the parasite from the host. And on the unfortunate chance that you piss it off enough for it to to raise your blood pressure and cause irreversible circulatory system damage, the only cure for the condition is getting the parasite removed.
Fifth, the cellular replication of the parasite directly leads to uncomfortable changes in the body of the host organism. As someone who generally sleeps like the dead, the arrival of a big belly that I can't sleep on, joints that hurt all the time and a small creature resident too close to my bladder to allow it any peace at all means that I am basically a slightly functional zombie. Slightly. I keep leaving my cellphone in the pantry and putting the same load of laundry to wash over and over because the parasite has robbed me of my ability to sleep like a corpse on ambien.
The one thing the parasite has going for it is that it's pretty stinkin' cute upon removal. And as it grows up, it does learn to sing The Itsy Bitsy Spider with a lisp.
House isn't the only one... It's how I refer to pregnancy as well, though some people point out that's probably because I've been deemed an unfit host.
ReplyDeleteI have always referred to pregnancy as a parasitic infection since my nursing school days...another case in point, if you are able to take in a meal with ANY nutritional benefit, it will benefit said parasite and leave the host with none.
ReplyDeleteNext you're going to say, "Patients lie."
ReplyDelete