Feeling Pouty — Please Skip, Whinging Ahead

Bah. I don’t feel good and I can’t sleep any­more and I’m the only one awake. There’s a very child­ish part of me that wants very much to find a way to wake Sam up so I won’t be alone. No, I would­n’t feel any bet­ter, but darn it, I’d have company!

But I’m not actu­al­ly 3 years old, so I won’t do that.

Yes­ter­day, I had a cough­ing fit that start­ed around 5 am. It was turn­ing into an asthma/anxiety attack, so Sam brought me a Xanax. I don’t take those often at all, as evi­denced by the fact that the bot­tle I have was a one-month sup­ply pre­scribed 4 or 5 years ago. One of the rea­sons I don’t take them often is that they knock me out com­plete­ly. I could bare­ly man­age to get the oat­meal Sam made for break­fast from bowl to mouth, and yes, I end­ed up wear­ing some. The spoon was just too tech­ni­cal for me at that point.

I was com­plete­ly uncon­scious (but not cough­ing!) by the time Sam left for work. Katie checked in on me peri­od­i­cal­ly, and appar­ent­ly gave me some Dayquil around 2:30. Sam called to check on me a cou­ple of times, but what­ev­er was said is a mys­tery to me, as I was in a ben­zo­di­azepine coma. I think I final­ly got up around 6 pm after he was home again.

I just could­n’t shake the grog­gi­ness, though. For the first time ever, we had to re-sched­ule our reg­u­lar “date night” because I was a zom­bie. Back to bed with me, then—and I did­n’t even remem­ber to take my nor­mal sleepy-time meds. I was vague­ly aware of Sam com­ing to bed at some point.

At about 2:30 am, my body informed me that we were Done Sleep­ing and would now move on to baby­ing my tummy.

I’ve had way too much IBS fun over the last few weeks. At first, we thought I had some kind of food poi­son­ing, but that does­n’t seem to be the case. No, my sys­tem just got hyper-reac­tive very sud­den­ly. I haven’t had this much IBS trou­ble since we lived in Stone Mountain.

Even if I take a sup­ple­ment like Lac­taid first, any­thing dairy (oth­er than aged ched­dar cheese) seems to be a Very Bad Idea. Choco­late is also a prob­lem. But some­times, a sim­ple ham­burg­er will cause a mad dash to the facil­i­ties. I’ve had sev­er­al days on the BRAT diet, but as soon as I add any­thing more com­plex than Saltines and ched­dar cheese, I’m in trou­ble again. 

And now I read that the BRAT diet is no longer recommended–when did that hap­pen? What’s this CRAM (cere­al, rice, apple­sauce, milk) non­sense? I’ve nev­er heard any doc­tor rec­om­mend any dairy prod­uct for some­one who has tum­my troubles!

When I was grow­ing up, the only time we got soda was when we had the stom­ach flu or some­thing sim­i­lar. Soda and Saltines were the most pam­per­ings my moth­er ever did. Why am I not sur­prised, now, to read that you’re sup­posed to avoid sug­ary drinks like soda?

I’m drink­ing lots of water but can’t seem to stay hydrat­ed no mat­ter what I do. I sup­pose I should be con­cerned about elec­trolytes, but I detest Gatorade, and I’m cer­tain­ly not going to use Pedi­alyte (although I do have a recipe for mak­ing an equiv­a­lent, some­where around here). I don’t have any idea what oth­er alter­na­tives there might be.

That brings me to now. I’m too wake­ful to try going back to bed. I’m hun­gry but afraid of putting any­thing but water in my sys­tem. I’m bored, bored, bored with the book I’ve been read­ing. I’ve read all the mag­a­zines that are around (except for the cur­rent issue of Seed, which nobody can pry from Katie’s hands. I think she sleeps with it—it cer­tain­ly isn’t in evi­dence out here). I can’t seem to fol­low the direc­tions on my stitch­ing project, and I’m too grumpy to kit up a new one.

I’d say that I want my mom­my, but I don’t, as she’s not much of a care­tak­er at all. I want my Sam. Pout.