Each Day Already is a Challenge

Sometimes you eat the bear; sometimes the bear eats you

Yes siree Bob, sometimes the bear eats you. My son's dad was "Houston's premiere piano bar-ister" back in the late 70s and early 80s and he sang a song with those words.

Sometimes you eat the bear
Sometimes the bear eats you
So c'est la vie
And c'est la guerre
Fair is fair is fair.

That was probably the chorus and I have absolutely no idea what the verses said. But I do remember those lines. (And the tune.)

Yesterday was a day when the bear ate me.

I had a 9 am doctor's appointment. I've been dealing with a chronic sinus infection and suddenly it felt like it was also in my chest and my ears and throat. Grrr. Sure enough it was. So the nurse practitioner I saw prescribed an antibiotic and told me to take 12-hour pseudoephedrine. I've taken pseudoephedrine before, the 30 mg ones. The 12-hour pills are 120 mg. And within 30 minutes of taking the antibiotic and pseudoephedrine, I WANTED TO DIE...AND HOPED IT DEATH CAME QUICKLY.

I've been through a lot - physically - in my 61 years. Knee injury. Back injury. 14 hour labor pains (and then a C-section). Chronic pain (because of fibromyalgia and arthritis). I've had chest pains and then had doctors arguing about whether my problem was heart or gall bladder. (Turns out they were both wrong. I have arteries and veins that spasm...because of the fibromyalgia and Raynaud's Syndrome.) But what I experienced yesterday was so much worse than anything I'd ever experienced before.

If you've ever been told to take niacin supplements - the kind that does "flush" you, not the non-flushing type - you know what it feels like to take too much. You get flushed. Your heart might race. It's temporary and not that bad.

What I experienced yesterday was similar to that, but about 100 times worse. Oh, I got a flushing feeling. But it felt as if my internal temperature had gone off the charts. Not only that, but it felt like I was having a hot poker shoved into every orifice of my body. Seriously. My heart raced. I cannot explain all that I felt.

I thought about calling 9-1-1, but thought I'd be cautious first. I tried calling the doc's office, but the call went to voicemail. So, I contacted my pharmacist. He informed me that I was having a reaction to the pseudoephedrine. He told me to eat some sugar and carbs and to drink some milk and that the effects would wear off in about 2-3 hours.

Okay, I was calmer. I took a chill pill (ie something for anxiety) and then my son decided that I should take my blood pressure.

When I had been at the doc's office earlier, my BP was 103/68. When I took it - after starting to calm down and after taking my chill pill - it was 157/90. I'm glad I didn't call 9-1-1 because they might have thought I was having a stroke or heart attack with the symptoms I was displaying.

Eventually the stuff was out of my system and my BP was back down to 105/70 in about 2 1/2 hours. Whew.

No sooner was that all over and done with than a guy from the power company showed up. We've been having some electrical problems at our house and that scares me. Years ago in TX, I saw an electrical fire and it wasn't pretty. Our lights have been flickering all over the house.

We had an electrician come and he did find a loose wire at the breaker box in the garage. But that didn't stop the flickering. He came back and found a loose wire at the meter outside. But that didn't stop the flickering.

Next we called in the power company. By the time the first guy showed up we had realized that the flickering was happening when it was windy. Ah-ha. It has to be an outside problem, right? The first electric employee didn't have a bucket truck. He put his ladder up and shook and shook the wire leading from the pole to the house. But he couldn't make the lights flicker.

The next guy brought a bucket truck and, lo and behold, he found a loose wire at the transformer. But, you guessed it. That didn't stop the flickering.

Yesterday when the power guy came to the house, I think it was the 5th one. He put connected some handy-dandy gadget to our meter that will tell them when we're experiencing flickering....to try to figure out why we are. It's going to be hooked up until Tuesday so they have days to analyze.

No sooner had the power guy gone than I got a call from our internet service provider (the phone company, since we have DSL through them) saying that the repair guy was minutes away from our house. For some reason, we suddenly have some strange stuff happening with our internet connection. The modem and router were 3 years old, so the guy replaced them. But he also said that our problem might be because of the electrical flickering problems we're having.

Great day in the morning. Sometimes the bear eats you.


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