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too stubborn to slow down
November 09, 2009
NOTICE:
No one uses them, so unless I hear back from anyone out there, I will be doing away with the comments in mid-November. If no one responds, I may also assume I have no readers and take the diary private.
I�ve been having these weird attacks again. Please skip this next section if you don�t want to be grossed out�it�s pretty nasty.
Over the past few years, I�ve occasionally experienced a very distinct set of symptoms: it starts with very intense abdominal cramps, usually at night. I sit in the bathroom for a while, expecting diarrhea, but nothing happens at first�then I suddenly feel light headed and horribly dizzy like I am about to faint and my breathing weakens. Then I start to break out in a cold, clammy sweat and the dizziness get worse.
Then I wake up on the bathroom floor, having passed out. I wake up still cramping, so I get back on the toilet, pass a hard stool, and sit there dizzy and sweating, breathing raggedly, and still cramping violently, until a flood of watery stool comes out. There are two or three of those, then I suddenly feel freezing cold, so I clean up, crawl back into bed with my teeth chattering, and let the �passing out� feeling drop me out of consciousness.
Up till now, this has been something that happens every few years, and I always figure it�s a stomach virus and it passes and I�m fine�just a little weak for a couple of days.
But now, it�s happening fairly often�about once a month (it hit me at 1:30 Saturday morning, this time). And it scares the hell out of me.
I felt weak as a kitten on when I woke up on Saturday, but I Spouse and I were determined that the beautiful weekend wasn�t going to be wasted, and we had a list of outdoor chores that had to get done before winter. So I had some coffee and rolls, then showered and dressed and threw in a load of wash before joining him in the backyard. He blew and raked and vacuumed and bagged all the leaves.
I cleared the flowerbed and cleaned out all the pots, cleaned up and stowed all the yard decorations and solar lights, wrapped the pool ladder and stowed it under the deck, took the swing cushions, table umbrella, wind chime, and pool float down to the basement and packed them away, pulled the beat-up wire fencing border apart and trashed it, and carried seven bags of shredded leaves (Heavy!) out to the curb for pickup.
And then it was lunchtime. Since Spouse and I had decided that his honey-do for the week was to replace the bathroom light fixture, and I needed to replace the broken globe off my bedroom ceiling fan, we stopped at Menards to shop, then had a quick bite at Taco Bell and came home.
I did lay down for a while in the afternoon�didn�t get any sleep, but since I was, at that point, dizzy, weak, and exhausted, it felt great just to lay down. I figured I was done for the day.
But.
When Spouse got ready to light the charcoal for dinner�the grill died. It had worn right through. Soooo�at suppertime, we had to get in the car and drive all the way across town to Wally�s to get a new grill. Luckily, they did have one. But by the time we got up there, got it, and came home, we�d killed an hour. And we still had to assemble it.
But eventually, we got it up and going, and the coals were ready�and Spouse fell down the porch steps and sent the hamburgers flying.
I was really kind of glad when Saturday was over, actually.
Having put myself through the wringer on Saturday, though, I had another night of extremely low-grade sleep. So yesterday morning, I dragged myself out of bed, sent the dog to the yard, started rolling on the coffee, the laundry, and a bunch of other tasks, made us a hot breakfast, then did the dishes, mixed and baked a batch of chocolate cupcakes, and cleaned the kitchen, stripped the bed, kept going on the laundry, carted a huge bin of CDs to the basement, cleaned out the front hall closet to make some storage room for the wireless stereo speakers we use in the backyard (they�ve never had a permanent home), went through a big stack of old clothes and came up with a garbage bag full of donate-ables, updated a bunch more photos in my big photo-frame screen, picked the last rose of the year, and made a home in the living room for our new electric room heater, which is also a fake Franklin stove.
(Silly, yes, but also kind of cute. And way nicer to look at than most portable heaters.)
In case you were wondering, while I was doing that, Spouse was cleaning out the garage, stowing the pool filter and pump, removing and cutting up a dead shrub, and putting the afore-mentioned heater together.
And in the afternoon, while I made up the bed all nice and fresh, and finished the laundry, and spent a little time playing on the computer�he made homemade stuffing, roast turkey breast, baked sweet potatoes, and steamed peas for a lovely Sunday dinner.
Which was delicious�and which we ate way early�about 4:00 We also went to bed way early--I couldn�t even manage to stay awake for the season finale of Mad Men! I recorded it, and I�ll watch it later, after he goes in the bedroom to read.
Reading: �Death of A Busybody� by Dell Shannon and "The Girl Scouts at Home, or Rosanna's Beautiful Day", by Katherine Keene Galt (one of my vintage YA books)
Surfing: I won�t link to it�it�s a friends semi-private cancer blog.
Listening: New Order, Beck, Bell X-1
At Random: click here
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