Friday, July 01, 2005

A shopping list

Yesterday morning went up the road & bought

     a small loaf of rye bread
     a loaf of thick sliced white bread
     2 jars of red wine with mushrooms pasta sauce (on special)
     a twin pack of printed paper towels (also on special)
     2L of skim milk
     3 bananas
     3 apples

Totally mundane; except it's an indication of me in denial. No lemons, no aspirin, both of which I was out of. Which is why I ended up later in the day scavenging through the bathroom drawers & swallowing some codeine that I found there.

I should have known better. I've been a heavy smoker for 50 years, wheeze when I breathe & have the appropriate smoker's cough for the length of the addiction. Oxygen deprivation factor #1. I currently have a very heavy chest flu – Odf #2 – that in concert with #1 means that when I cough I feel my head is going to go spinning off. Heavy codeine use, as I discovered earlier this year when I collapsed in a hotel bathroom in Sydney after several days of self-medication for an abcessed tooth, is Odf #3. &, apparently, even light codeine use, when combined with the other two, also impedes the flow of oxygen.

Which is probably why I found myself on the kitchen floor this morning, with no recollection of the descent. Only the coughing fit at the beginning, & me sitting on my arse at the end.

It's about time I stopped pretending I am invincible.

3 comments:

Jean Vengua said...

Scary. I hate to think of you out on the floor way over there in Oz, and me not being able to do anything about it.

I wish you were in vincible

But you're not.

I hope you'll be feeling better soon.

Karri Kokko said...

As for hopes for your well-being, so do we. I just wish there were a way to morph pahtos from apparent a- to active em-.

Martin Edmond said...

commiserations also ... I want to ring you up but don't have your phone # ... get well soon.