Strix, if your nails peel off in layers like onions after you wear nail polish, you're allergic to the formaldehyde in the formula like I am. (Or maybe it's the toluene.) My nails are always thin and weak, but they don't peel unless I wear regular polish.

Mine peel whether or not I wear polish, but I am wearing it a lot now -- combatting a life-long nail-biting habit.

I just did mine last night, so when this starts to chip, I'll just give them a good buffing and use some strengthener for a week. I have a shitton of heavy-duty cleaning to do (like, cleaning with bleach water every baseboard and door in the whole house) and I try to use gloves for a lot of it, but I'm not doing to use gloves for everything.

Buffing is the one things that cannot happen to my nails. Thins my already weak nails.

My period starting explains why I feel like crap.

Steph, O, font of medical knowledge, is there any reason either omeprazole or hydrochlorothiazide would cause either heartburn or a UTI? Because I've had both, chronically, since I started taking them, and I never had either before in my life.

Omeprazole should prevent heartburn, so that would be weird. Let me go look stuff up -- give me a minute.

Well, I stand corrected; apparently heartburn is a reported side effect of omeprazole, in 2% of patients in trials. That is weird as hell. UTI is also listed for omeprazole, but it doesn't say what percentage of patients reported it.

For hydrochlorothiazide, "gastric irritation" is a reported side effect, but doesn't list percentage of patients who reported it.

My guess would be that the omeprazole is the culprit.

Thanks, Steph. I started taking hydrochlorothiazide for high blood pressure, immediately got heartburn that wouldn't go away, took Zantac (which worked okay) until the doctor gave me omeprazole. Now I've got a persistent UTI and the heartburn is not gone. I've decided to switch back to Zantac, cut hydrochlorothiazide in half for a while (they already told me I could do that), and continue to drink ridiculous amounts of cranberry juice, which is getting rid of the UTI and is way preferable to antibiotics.

Right now I'm falling into a rabbit hole of medicines to control the side effects of the medicines that control the side effects of the medicine for a condition I didn't have until I took that other medicine, and I don't like it. I had four problems when I first went to this doctor, and now I have eight. Enough with the medicines.

Ugh. I don't want to turn into my grandmother, always talking talking about her medications and her aches and pains all the time.

Ugh. I don't want to turn into my grandmother, always talking talking about her medications and her aches and pains all the time.

I'm ALWAYS afraid I'm turning into my dad, because that's the only thing he ever talks about -- what pain/illness/mystery symptom/medical anomaly he's currently experiencing, and how many meds he takes for it. And yet I do it all the fucking time -- to Tim WAY more than here (my IBS is inexplicably flaring and meds aren't helping, my back hurts [my back ALWAYS hurts], oh god a migraine, why is my vagina broken, a normal hip shouldn't feel like that, my cholesterol level is WHAT, etc.).

Plus I may have accidentally signed a contract in my own blood and sold my soul to the dark forces. Like you do.

That's how we know we're middle aged, ailments are a valid, interesting conversation choice.