YES-- the steroids will keep you awake..!!!
I was up for 6 nights once on a steroid pack for my cough. It was fantastic. I begged for more, but they Laughed at me. I even wrote a column about it--
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Big cars, big hair, big allergies! No one warned me when we moved to Dallas that it was home to every allergen known to man. We snuffled and sneezed and wheezed through
the year, each season offering its own specialite de la maison, like a five star restaurant of respiratory irritants. As I sat in the doctor's office one day, I noticed a chart on the wall showing the high allergy regions throughout the United States. Dallas won hands
down; it had not one clean month. We staggered through sniffly, damp-nosed years, foggy with antihistimines, until an allergist finally prescribed --
the steroid pack from heaven.
It all began in ragweed season- a cough that wouldn't quit and deepened and lengthened as the winter bore down on us (a Dallas winter- not to be confused with Winter
Wonderlands and Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire). It was the kind of cough that awakens you choking and gasping, trying frantically to breathe in the middle of the night,
thinking that these might be your last moments on earth. The kind that has your spouse saying, "Damn it! I can't sleep with you making all that racket. Go to the doctor."”
This time, being in a weakened condition, I agreed to the full battery of tests and learned what I already knew- that I was allergic to everything on God's green planet, most of
which apparently grew in our front yard. This knowledge did nothing for my cough, but the prescription for the steroid pack certainly did. It looked so small and ineffectual, a little cardboard packet with decreasing doses, seven the first day, six the next, until
finally they are gone.
DAY 1: CW had to prepare for a debate tournament. His very first. The topic--
Affirmative Action. His partner faxed him his side of the arguments (they had to be prepared to take either side and had divvied up the work). It was ten o’clock at night and
his partner's argument was incoherent. CW was near tears, but I felt amazingly good, full of energy. "Go to bed,"”I said confidently. "I'll rewrite this." I took his notes and the resource materials and retired. Not to worry that I had never debated anything in my life. At four in the morning, I was standing in the middle of the bed declaiming with great Conviction- yea, even Passion- the cons of Affirmative Action. It was brilliant. It was genius. They lost the competition and he still blames me, though I think it must have been their presentation- just not
enough Conviction and Passion.
Day 2: I cleaned the entire house, even the places no one sees. I took a swab to the pleats of my lampshades. How have I not seen the need for this before?
Day 3: I reorganized the closets, cleaned the refrigerator, and balanced the checkbook. I thought about painting the house, but couldn't lift the 40 foot ladder.
Day 4: Despite not having slept for three nights, I felt GREAT! It was 32 degrees out and while cleaning the poolhouse, which suddenly seemed to require this for the first time in a year, I noticed there were-- oh NO!- leaves in the pool. They must be removed immediately! I grabbed the net and leaned over the water to capture them.
Unfortunately, I forgot that the pool has a little“lover's seat”- an indentation in the deep end that bubbles outward and as I stepped out to gain leverage with the 12 foot pole, I found myself in thin air. Clad in jeans and a down jacket, I slowly, and I think rather gracefully, fell over into 8 1/2 feet of very cold water. I came out much more quickly than I had entered.
In the acre behind the house, Ammo was kicking a soccer ball. He heard my screams and curses as I peeled off the down jacket and started on the jeans. “Go get my bathrobe and bring it to the poolhouse.” I yelled, teeth chattering. I ran inside the poolhouse and stripped down. We don’t heat the poolhouse unless there are guests and it was about 40 degrees in there. And I was wet and naked. And Ammo was very slow. Indeed, Ammo was non-existent. After half an hour, I concluded that Ammo had forgotten his mother almost drowned in the pool and was freezing her naked self off out in the poolhouse.
Survival mode kicked in. I searched through the kitchen drawers and found- yes!- a 4th of July, red, white and blue, plastic tablecloth which I wrapped around my matching blue body and rushed through the yard to the house. I emerged in the living room, screaming, Ammo! Where the hell were you?”
He was in the kitchen, getting a glass of milk, and looked at me for a minute in silence, perhaps wondering when I had started dressing in an American flag for casualwear, before realization dawns.
“Oh, he said casually, sipping from his glass. “I forgot.”
By Day 7, the house was immaculate, the yard was manicured, the freezer was full. The doctor's office called to see how I was doing. I tried to fake the cough and told them I
needed a refill. “We hear that a lot, Mrs. Westbrook,” they said and coldly laughed at me.
Every fall I await the return of The Cough. Sometimes I lie in the yard with the cat amid the dying grass and weeds, breathing deeply and hoping, the memory of that glorious week etched indelibly on my brain... |
