Sweating the small stuff

I had an "interesting" experience today. Went to the mail box at UPS and got a boatload of mail and my drugs from the VA. Also, a check for $25 for some patterns. Yay! Then I decided to go to Sam's club for some essentials, like toilet paper, freezer bags, milk, cheese, deli meats.

Got home to find my landlord had mowed the yard and was weedeating the drive. This was around 3:15, and it was scorching hot. I took in the cold items, grabbed a couple bottles of water out of the fridge and took him one. We talked in the shade of the house for about 5 minutes, then I went back to take the rest of the stuff in from the car. I had begun to break out in my normal prickly heat rash already. This happens everytime I get a little overheated.

By the time I was making the third trip from the car to the house, I felt like I was about to pass out. I had already downed most of that half-litre of water, so I chugged the rest, and sat down. I've had heat exhaustion before, so I knew the signs, I thought. I stripped and took a cold shower, then sat down on the edge of the tub to towel off, because I was feeling lightheaded. I went into the bedroom, put on clean undies and a tshirt, and fell onto the bed for a few minutes. I was noticing that everything looked to me as if I had just stepped out of the bright sunlight. Weird.

So I got up and nearly had a vertigo spell. This was not good. I stumbled into the living room, drank another half-litre of water, and it occured to me that I hadn't eaten today. Maybe I was also having a blood sugar drop. I grabbed a piece of this peppermint sugar stick candy that I love, and ate it, hoping that might also help.

The funky thing was what my vision was doing. Everything looked sort of splotchy, like looking at the ground under a tree where it's dappled with sunlight. I could barely read the computer screen, but I looked up heat exhaustion on WebMD, and found that I had done all the right stuff so far, except go to the ER. I seriously contemplated calling 911, but decided that I wouldn't because I didn't seem to have a fever, and I was still sweating. (If you stop sweating, it's heat stroke...get to the ER.)

I threw some cheese tortellini on to boil and sat down to answer emails. My vision began to clear, and I began to cool down. After I had the tortellini, I decided to lie down and take a nap. I didn't wake up until almost 9PM. I just can't take the heat at all any more. I probably wasn't outside a total of more than fifteen minutes out of the air conditioning. Another reason I don't go out during the daytime heat.

Twice before, I've had a collapse from the heat. Both those times were in Navy boot camp, where we were marching in the 97 degree heat of the Orlando sun. The first time, I made it back to the barracks, where I collapsed on the way to the bathroom. Next thing I knew, they had stripped me down and put me in the cold shower and were forcing me to drink water.

The next time, I was running the 2-1/4 mile run, and on the next to the last lap, I fell out. I remember people jumping over me. I got some water down me, and the drill instructors informed me that I was now joining "Special Training Division" because that made me fail the run. I spent three months in boot camp, when most people only spend two, or go home. I didn't want to be a bad statistic. I also spent my thirtieth birthday in "special training". The instructor asked me one day why I just didn't give up and go home. I told them that day I turned thirty, and I wasn't going to quit until I was out of there. The next day, I passed the drill.