The Visible Woman...December 15, 2003

When I'm feeling great, nothing can touch me. I've watched FFP slip into that chasm of illness the last few days. This morning my throat feels scratchy. Not sore just scratchy. I sneeze a little.

With my lunch I have echinecea tea. I'm not really sick but I'm feel myself tipping toward it and I want it to stop.

Sometimes, since I learned that Echinecea helps, I come back from this precipice and the episode is forgotten without feeling really, really sick.

However. At 3:35 p.m. today after sneezing a few times before, I sneezed and felt the need of a tissue. (Where do I keep the tissues? I don't use them often.) I immediately took a twelve-hour Dimetapp. I'm not going to sneeze and drip through my evening. I hope it will do the trick. I don't seem to have fever or any other symptom.

This may qualify as TMI but at 4:03 I sneeze again...but do not need a tissue. About twenty minutes later I need a tissue again (boxes in all relevant rooms are now located) and I consider one of these little nose gel things FFP is using. However, they admit that they may cause a increase in symptoms so I have a clementine (Vitamin C) and search out the little packets of tissue to take with me. I dress for our evening out because that will make me feel better, I think. It does. Sort of. I sneeze again, go for tissues again and have a couple of Echinecea capsules and some more cure tea.

I despise illness. Logically, I understand it. Emotionally I think anyone who gives in to it is a wimp and that includes, most especially, me.

So...we go out. I'm armed with tissues and riding on my twelve-hour Dimetapp and cure tea. This fools me, around 8:30, into thinking the alcohol actually helps. Yeah, I know.

We get home around ten. I don't feel that bad, really. We sit in the living room and I try to read. Around midnight we go to bed. I think I slept a little. I don't think I slept much after that. My head feels stuffed and achey and my throat tickles. Finally at around three, just shy of the twelve hour alleged reach of that Dimetapp, I took some of that four-hour elixir. It doesn't promise not to make you drowsy like the pills did. Still I sleep poorly.

Now that I'm leaning on the decongestants to feel OK I have to figure out when to stop. I hate illness. I am a wimp since this is a common cold or allergies and really 'nothing much.'

If you can't get the pipe in the wall...take the wall to the pipe. I just don't know about this	the chasm between healthy and sick Sometimes you feel yourself slipping, slipping into the hole of ill health. When I'm feeling great, nothing can touch me. I've watched FFP slip into that chasm of illness the last few days. This morning my throat feels scratchy. Not sore just scratchy. I sneeze a little. With my lunch I have echinecea tea. I'm not really sick but I'm feel myself tipping toward it and I want it to stop. Sometimes, since I learned that Echinecea helps, I come back from this precipice and the episode is forgotten without feeling really, really sick. However. At 3:35 p.m. today after sneezing a few times before, I sneezed and felt the need of a tissue. (Where do I keep the tissues? I don't use them often.) I immediately took a twelve-hour Dimetapp. I'm not going to sneeze and drip through my evening. I hope it will do the trick. I don't seem to have fever or any other symptom. This may qualify as TMI but at 4:03 I sneeze again...but do not need a tissue. About twenty minutes later I need a tissue again (boxes in all relevant rooms are now located) and I consider one of these little nose gel things FFP is using. However, they admit that they may cause a increase in symptoms so I have a clementine (Vitamin C) and search out the little packets of tissue to take with me. I dress for our evening out because that will make me feel better, I think. It does. Sort of. I sneeze again, go for tissues again and have a couple of Echinecea capsules and some more cure tea. I despise illness. Logically, I understand it. Emotionally I think anyone who gives in to it is a wimp and that includes, most especially, me. So...we go out. I'm armed with tissues and riding on my twelve-hour Dimetapp and cure tea. This fools me, around 8:30, into thinking the alcohol actually helps. Yeah, I know. We get home around ten. I don't feel that bad, really. We sit in the living room and I try to read. Around midnight we go to bed. I think I slept a little. I don't think I slept much after that. My head feels stuffed and achey and my throat tickles. Finally at around three, just shy of the twelve hour alleged reach of that Dimetapp, I took some of that four-hour elixir. It doesn't promise not to make you drowsy like the pills did. Still I sleep poorly. Now that I'm leaning on the decongestants to feel OK I have to figure out when to stop. I hate illness. I am a wimp since this is a common cold or allergies and really 'nothing much.'
JUST TYPING It's hard to imagine illness or pain. Once it's gone. It's hard to imagine feeling perfect. Once you slip to the other side.
		Food Diary. *breakfast* banana *lunch* big bowl of Product 19 with 2% milk and a teaspoon of sugar two cups of Echinecea tea with teaspoon of sugar a clementine about two ounces of cheddar cheese *snacks* clementine Echinecea tea with teaspoon of sugar Camomile tea with sugar *dinner* shallot french fries (I shared but not much) pita and jalapeno and crab dip (again, some sharing) a few crab-filled mushrooms red wine (a bunch) Jack and water Today I - thought about eating candy (these real fruit pectin candies I like beckon) but didn't. - lost interest in food a little..respiratory stuff does that.
		Time flies.... I woke up before seven to hear our buddies on the radio pitching the Christmas Cabaret tonight. I would have been on time for the water aerobics class but a sub-contractor showed up about the time that I was leaving (actually exactly as I was driving away) and I had to let him in and talk to him. I didn't do anything at the club but the class and I came back and Dad was here to pick up some stuff I ordered for him on the Internet. I talked to him and wrote a couple of checks and a letter to my niece and talked to a friend on the phone and then went to the bank for some cash. I came back and did some e-mail and such. I decided to try to reduce the newspaper pile. After I started feeling sick, I obsessed about it. I enjoyed sitting and listening to the music, though. That was fun and I lost myself to it.

		Reading. As Eagles Screamed Old newspapers wherein I learned of new WEB sites I need to research and gadgets I need to consider owning.
		nada
		Exercise Forty-five minutes of water aerobics.
	. .	Physically, as I say in this day's essay, I felt like I might get sick but I'm not quite sick for part of the day. Then I feel I am sick. Hence falls the mood. The incessant banging in the remodel area (which I know to be probably stuff getting done over that we listened to the banging for this weekend) doesn't improve my mood. Sneezing and runny nose are horrible symptoms.
	It's a Tangled Web we weave...these days of our lives.	One year ago "People start leaving because tomorrow is a workday. Not for me! Ha, ha. But we leave and I go to bed pretty happily. I'm a recluse...parties are hard." Two years ago "(Do you ever wonder how people know what's actually wrong when they don't go to the doctor? Or worse, go to the doctor but he only looks at symptoms and prescribes an antibiotic?)"