Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

[Hmm. I wonder whether I should make a "talking about my health" icon. Not today.]

Monday, I alternated between thinking I had a 24-hour stomach bug and wondering how long death by dehydration was going to take (and contemplating how pissed at me my friends would be if I let that happen). Tuesday I thought the 24-hour illness had run its course and I just needed another day to get my strength back and for my body to get itself back to normal. Wednesday I hit Wikipedia for clues as to how long the runs might last, anything that might make me more comfortable, and how the hell more liquid winds up in the bowel than the amount of water I've ingested. Wednesday I also thought making it to this weekend's gig looked unlikely (due to extreme dizziness and headache as well as the whole stay-close-to-the-bathroom thing) and making it to yesterday's clinic appointment looked downright impossible. (Usual irony re: being too sick to go to the doctor. Always a sense of wrongness there.) Yesterday afternoon things finally slowed down wrt fluid output and the dizziness lessened; tomorrow's gig started looking possible again, I actually replied to some email and left a few comments in other people's journals, and I started thinking about food other than the two cups of cracked wheat and lentils in vegetable broth that I'd made Tuesday and reheated Wednesday and Thursday. I haven't eaten much solid food this week; last night I felt brave enough to risk a frozen pizza. (Yes, smartasses, I meant a cooked pizza purchased frozen, not a pizza served frozen. Pbbbbt!) I'm hungry but a wee bit scared of my stomach. Today I'll make a grocery run and go to the music store for the guitar part that I'd originally planned to buy Monday. And actually joining the rest of the band at tomorrow's gig looks more likely than not, though I wouldn't call it an absolute certainty yet. Wish me luck.

Dizziness/lightheadedness and headache have been big problems for me lately. I was recently given a prescription for a beta blocker as a migraine preventative. The week before last, I made it to rehearsals with a lot of help from anniemal; last week I made it to both rehearsals on my own (though tardy to each), felt like I could Do Things for the first time in a long while, and started feeling a little more like me again. (Oh, there's a whole long essay half-composed in my head about what aspects of Glenn-ness I've felt missing for the past several months and the effects on my relationships, art, and general enjoyment of life, but I haven't been sure whether to write it out because I think it'll sound a lot like wallowing in self-pity even though I feel more frustrated and resentful about it (but, in all honesty, some self-pity is in the mix).) But also last week, I was told to stop taking the beta blocker so that I could start a different drug that didn't go with it. I decided to wait until I got through last weekend's gigs to make the change. When I was so amazingly dizzy at the peak of my illness Monday, well that was hardly surprising as being sick often includes that. When I was still terribly dizzy Tuesday, well that wasn't especially puzzling since Monday had weakened me so. When I was even more dizzy Wednesday and suffered a full-on migraine, I started thinking going off the beta blocker may have been a really bad idea -- and I looked up side effects of another drug I'd just started and found diarrhea, nausea, and dizziness listed as known possible side effects. I switched back to the drug regimen I was using last week. Yesterday I was a lot less dizzy. This morning, a little dizzy. Now this all could be just coincidental timing with recovery from Monday's stomach bug -- I don't even know which explanation is more likely -- but I'm a little scared of dropping the beta blocker again until the next blank space in my performance calendar. We can try this experiment again when I have a little less to lose. And I'll try the other drug when I'm not already trying to get over three symptoms listed as possible side effects of it. Yesterday's appointment has been rescheduled for Tuesday; this'll be the first thing I want to talk about.

So for now I'm moving slowly, exploring what my body's capabilities and limitations are now because the answers aren't the same as last week or the week before, and saving up energy to use on stage tomorrow if I do get to the gig. Let's see how many days back on the beta blocker are required for me to get up there looking Glennish again.