This is why I deserve more sick days.

I have considered (on several occasions) using some of my sick days to bracket a weekend and go on a lovely, long vacation. Most people get the chance to go during a summer break, but personally, I enjoy travelling in the off-seasons. Specifically, fall. One of the reasons that I am unable to take said lovely, long vacation this year is that I had to actually *use* most of my sick days for sickness. (Manly type readers, stop here. I am fairly certain you will be too squeamish to carry on.) SICKNESS OF THE OVARIES. (See? What did I tell you? YOU DIDN'T LISTEN!)

It's true, mostly-lady-audience now. I suffer from inexplicably horrible cramps on occasion and wind up curled into a fetal position in the corner of my room, cursing everything that is good and holy because SWEET TINY JESUS please just take my uterus out with a coat hanger the Aleve doesn't always work, the Vicodin doesn't always work and one time I blacked out and EM had to take me to the hospital.

Probably the worst was when I was at a rockabilly festival in Las Vegas with a girlfriend of mine, and after dragging our wastey-asses into bed at 4am one night (day? Does that count as day?), I woke up with gut-wrenching cramps and no painkillers on me. I managed to make my way down to the hotel lobby, which was a testament to how ill I felt. I literally crawled out of bed in my boxers and wifebeater white-trash-pajamas, smeared mascara and ratty hair, walked halfway across the casino of our hotel with no shoes and bought 6 packages of single-dose Aleve at the gift shop, then proceeded to walk back to the elevators, hunched over and clutching at my agonizing abdomen like I was about to go into labor. People stared. I didn't care. I was going to die and I think I saw Jesus. He was dealing blackjack.

When I got back to the elevators, I bent over to avoid hurling and of course another older woman decided to share my elevator. The cramps were getting worse and things were getting blurry, and all of a sudden, I was waking up on the elevator floor, face on the tile and staring horizontally at the woman who had exited 3 floors before my stop. She looked panicked.

"Are you okay?! Should I call a hospital?"

Apparently, I had fainted.

"No," I said, also panicking. "No, I'm fine! I just uh... fell asleep." I really said this. Why, you ask? I have no idea. Obviously, there was already some kind of problem with oxygen getting to my brain and all I knew was that I didn't want to go to the hospital. I had drinking to do later. I pushed the DOOR CLOSE NOW button, choked down my 6 Aleve and passed out on the bathroom floor of my hotel room. Three hours later, my lovely lady friend woke me up and asked why I was on the bathroom floor. I explained everything, we laughed about it a lot, poured some very strong Jack and Cokes and got ready to head back to the hotel bar.

Basically, I need more sick days because cramps are clearly a more serious ailment than my HR department is giving them credit for.