Cantakerous Canker
Grumble. What a day!
I’m behind in my work, so I attacked my to do list like a woman on a mission and found that I absolutely needed my binder full of archive CDs.
…which of course was hidden in one of my many boxes still unpacked, gloriously surrounded by various other unpacked items owned by H.E.—heavy, unorganized items, mind you, which always freaks out my OCD sensibilities when I cast an eye over them.
I knew it had to be in one of four certain-sized boxes, two of which were on the periphery of my neatly stacked boxes of books, easy to unearth, the other two of which were sitting somewhere underneath H.E.’s fax machine and at the center of the most jumbled mess you can imagine, not so easy to unearth.
Naturally, it was in the last of the four boxes, the one furthest from the edge, the hardest to get to, at the very bottom and heart of the stacks.
So I’m fine now, considering. Not so grumpy now.
But I’ve been sick off and on since the first day of the move, everything from the flu to the cold, perhaps a little bit of food poisoning and sinus headaches. It’s been swell, really.
Somehow the worst of any illness I get always begins with me biting my tongue or the inside of my mouth, which pisses me off because once I’ve done that, it’s hard for me to avoid doing it again. I bite. It swells. It gets in the way, and I bite it again. ARGH!
For a long time, because I’ve related this bit of self-cannibalism to colds, I’ve often called the resulting sores cold sores, but a co-worker of mine at my last day job asked me, “Do you have herpes?”
“No,” I said. “Why?”
“Then you don’t get cold sores. What you get are canker sores.”
Ah. It was like a bright light came on for me. All those times I bit myself and referred to my sores as cold sores? Could people have been thinking, “Whoa. That woman has herpes?”
Oh, my God. The delayed humiliation. I suppose that explains it if people seemed to pull away from me.
It was that or my grumpy attitude.
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7 thoughts on “Cantakerous Canker”
Wow… I always thought “cold sore” and “canker sore” meant the same thing, too. When I was younger I used to bite my lips and inside of my cheeks, creating the same sores you describe. Not so much now, but every so often.
One thing you might want to try is a medication called Kanka. It’s over-the-counter, usually found in the dental aisle of most drugstores. The trick is to dry off your lip (or cheek) before applying and then keeping your mouth open long enough for it to dry. It forms a protective layer over the sore, and also has a numbing agent. Good stuff.
Hope you get to feeling better April!
If you actually did have cold sores, because of your diminutiveness, I’d actually refer to it as twerpes. But if you think you caught the cold sore at your local 7-11, it may be that you have slerpes. Thank goodness it’s just a canker sore. In either case, I shan’t be kissing you. 😛
I’ve never even heard of the term “canker sore”.
JJ … I’ll have to try that, thanks! 🙂 My usual cure is to get plenty of fluids and vitamin C, and they usually go away in a few days. Like you, I don’t get the canker sores much any more. I used to get them a lot when I had braces, when the metal would just tear into my flesh. For me to get them now, it would have to be a perfect storm — stress, dehydration, weakened immune system, impending illness, and accidental biting of my tongue, lip, or cheek. Kanka sounds like the perfect thing to use while I wait to get better.
Zee, lol, smooch!!! Not sure about those other things, but after drinking soda, I think I get berpes. 😛
Kat, I’m glad to have enriched your vocabulary! 😀 I heard of canker sores in my childhood, but like JJ, I thought it was interchangeable with cold sores.
Ack, I hope you’re feeling better.
Canker sores can cometh from eating or drinking acidic fruit or fruit juice. Avoid orange juice until they’re gone. You can put a little salt directly on a canker to help convince it to go away, too.
Well … considering that one of the causes of canker sores is a deficiency in folic acid and vitamin B12, I don’t think they can come directly from eating acidic fruit or fruit juice. Acidic fruit does, however, irritate existing canker sores and make them more painful, so I usually try not to have anything acidic while I have the sores — no vinegary Italian dressing, for instance, and no salsa. Nothing with too much rough texture or that could snag on the sore somehow. Nothing that requires too much chewing, which puts me in danger of biting it again.
Milk of magnesia is often recommended to ease the pain, but I’m fine with ice or popsicles. My parents often recommended salt or salt water, too, but for me, it makes the pain worse without really making it heal any faster. I don’t know why, but drinking plenty of fluids always worked best for me. I think it’s because I usually don’t drink enough water.
Plus, I think one of the reasons I got the sores and sickness this time is that right after the move, I stopped taking my daily vitamins, and I wasn’t eating a regularly balanced diet or drinking enough fluids. In the end, that always gets me.
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