How low can you go?

Things have not been going great here in the land of paralyzed stomachs. Last Monday I got my Covid and Flu boosters and I got knocked through a loop.

For whatever reasons, I haven’t felt any of the Covid vaccinations’ side effects, besides a sore arm, right away. But 4 or 5 days afterwards, it hits me hard. This was true for both the Moderna and Pfizer, although my Pfizer reactions have been milder than the Moderna ones. I got the Pfizer bivalent booster because that is what the local CVS had on offer.

Things started to go sideways on Thursday when I discovered that nausea does indeed have more levels than I had previously experienced. Fortunately, I had an acupuncture appointment already scheduled for that day. My acupuncturist was also very impressed with the new level of nausea that I had discovered. So much so that he had to add needles twice to my usual nausea management protocol before I could get comfortable. Comfortable being a relative term as I only managed to get a single container (and it’s whopping 325 calories) of formula in along with some crackers that day.

Friday, I was particularly out of it, and once again only managed to get in a single container of supplement. But, for the first time in possibly ever, it felt better to eat than to drink, so I did get some cucumber avocado roll and some seaweed salad in me. It also turned out that I had completely forgotten to take my meds that morning. So there was that.

Turns out that the additional 81 calories that I get from that last few ounces of supplement really do make a huge difference. I kinda felt like the Enterprise when Engineering is filled with smoke and Scotty is busy telling Kirk that he isn’t sure how much more he can get out of the ship. Completely unstable and leaning heavily to one side.

Saturday, I could barely get out of bed. For the first time in years, if ever, I spent the day in bed listening to podcasts and watching TV. Our bed is just a few feet from the couch. It wasn’t the distance that was getting me. it was the having to sit upright that just took too much energy to do.

Occasionally, I am capable of learning and I made damn well sure that I got my full, albeit paltry, allotment of formula yesterday. And today I am feeling duly rewarded for my efforts and am feeling like myself again. However, the bar for what feels like myself has dropped very low in the past year and a half. Nevertheless, it is a welcome feeling.

Fortunately, I am running out of time to do this to myself again. The Benecalorie and its concentrated 330 calories should be arriving in the mail any day now. And things are shuffling along on the tube front. Having determined that the doctor that my GI wants to endoscopically insert my enteric feeding tube accepts our insurance, I am just waiting to hear if that doctor wants to see me first or just just go ahead and schedule the procedure.

In a “yes, I did used to do this for a living” moment, it took two tries, but if you want to get my posts emailed to you, just click on the Subscribe! tab.