Thursday, March 27, 2008

Sick.

Finally the autumn weather is upon me! I love autumn; the crisp mornings and evenings, the clear blue days, the 'whoomp' as the central heating kicks in at about 6:30 in the morning and wakes me up. I love the way the air smells in the mornings, and I love it when there's a moderate day refreshed with a cold breeze.

I've been enjoying this glorious weather, by lying around at home and feeling dreadful all week. Isn't that just wonderful? No. No, it isn't. I hate being sick. Whenever I'm feeling particularly robust, I always wish I could get a cold or something so I can have some time off to just knit and chill at home -- but when I'm actually sick, I hate every sodding minute of it. I hate the feebleness, the weakness, the symptoms (of course). Urgh, everything. But the thing I hate most is the limitation: I hate wanting to do something, planning something out, only to be limited by my suddenly feeble and useless body. It doesn't take much to take me out of action, either. This week has been ruined by crippling low blood pressure -- a ridiculous sentence for me to type, but all week I haven't been able to stand or walk, or even sit for too long, without everything going sparkly and grey. I can't do a damn thing. I felt good yesterday afternoon, so I bounded about (with moderate rests in between the bounding) and optimistically packed my bags for work.

No way. I couldn't even sit up this morning, without the world going grey and me beginning to tilt. So I dragged my pathetic arse to the drop-in clinic. Boy, that sucked. We waited for about 90 minutes before the GP even got to see me. During waiting time, we were surrounded by an assortment of walk-ins, some looking almost crippled with misery (such as myself), others chattering and gossiping and laughing away. I envied them bitterly. Ellen was playing on the TV and many people chuckled at it, which lightened the atmosphere. After seeing the GP -- who I didn't feel was really listening, and who can blame him with a turnover of patients like that? -- we learned my blood pressure was around 95/60 (pretty low, even for me) and my heartrate was about 160. And so I was stuck into another queue for the pathology lab for generic blood tests. Awful. They couldn't even get any blood out of me, so we gave up and I'm going back tomorrow. The whole thing sucks and I'd be willing to bet a bottle of red that they find nothing except a low iron count. And I'm suspecting very low.

Boy, does this whole thing suck. The only plus is that the doctor said I need to eat more salt to retain more water. I loooove salt. Mmm. It's going to be great. As I type this, I'm stuffing my craw with pretzels. Ooh baby.

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