Adventures in Dehydration

Even before the flood on Tuesday night, I'd been feeling run down and sick. I kept putting off going to the doctor in the hope that it would just go away on its own. But I kept feeling worse and worse. Finally, Friday morning Foxfire flat out told me to call and make an appointment with Dr. M. It's a good thing he did. When I got to the Dr's office that afternoon, he took one look at me and said that I looked dehydrated, he did a quick evaluation and determined that I probably had an upper respiratory infection, one of the ones that dehydrate you as your body tries to fight it. And the fact that I'd been working outside in the heat to try and clear away storm damage had just exacerbated the problem. He had the nurse try to take some blood to determine exactly what the infection was, but I was so dehydrated that she couldn't get the needle into my vein. Apparently, when you are severely dehydrated, your blood vessels contract or something. At that point, Dr. M told me that they needed to get fluids in me NOW! They had already given me a bottle of water which I had been drinking, but my poor body apparently required more drastic measures. He had me lay down on the examining table and hooked me up to an IV. They pumped two whole bags of IV fluids into me.

As they pumped the fluids into me, I started shaking and shivering so badly that my teeth were chattering and I could barely talk. The office temp was set at 69 degrees (they told me when I said that I was cold) and the fluids were also 69 degrees (since they were kept at room temperature), so as they went into my bloodstream they chilled me internally as well. It was absolutely miserable. After only about 15 minutes, my poor muscles were so tired from the violent shivering, they started cramping. And every time my arm twitched, the IV needle hurt a little more. They piled three blankets on me, turned off the AC and opened the window to let hot Texas air in, but I kept shivering and shaking until there were no more cold fluids going in me. It took about 45 more minutes.

Even after the IV was done, they had me stay in the room for a while so they could keep an eye on me and make sure I was well enough to drive home. Dr. M told me in no uncertain terms that I was not to do any strenuous work for the next several days. That I could go outside and supervise the clean up and repair, but that I would have to come inside every hour for about 15 minutes and drink a glass of water. If I didn't take proper care of myself as my body fought off this infection, I might end up having to go to the hospital. I HATE hospitals. So, as frustrating as it will be to watch everyone else work and not be able to help. I will obey my Dr. and be a lazy bum. Foxfire will be keeping an eye on me to make sure I follow instructions.

It's not that I particularly liked doing all the work to try and clean up the flood damage. The work that I've done so far has my muscles aching and I'm covered in bruises. It's just that since I can't hold down a job, and there are so many normal things that I can't do because of my anxiety/depression/sleep disorder, that when there is something that I can do, I get a real sense of accomplishment out of doing it. Friday morning, before going to the Dr. I had been working to clear the flood wrack and several very large, very heavy pieces of fencing off of two of my rose bushes that had been buried underneath debris during the flood. It was hard work, especially trying to move the large panels of fencing without damaging the poor roses any more than they had already been damaged. When I finally got the rose bushes clear and saw some of their branches beginning to straighten up and look like they were going to survive, it was a very gratifying feeling.

Later today as friends and family come help us fix things up, it's going to be hard watching everyone else work and feeling, yet again, that I'm not a contributing member of the human race.

Fourth lesson with Christine

My fourth lesson with Christine was last night and hopefully, I can remember it well enough to describe it. I'm suffering a little from what I think might be a dehydration headache this morning. I really need to remember to drink during my lesson and drink even more afterwards. Anyway...

Foxfire came with me to my lesson last night, which was really nice. He also took pictures of me riding. I'll post some of them once he's downloaded them to my computer. (I really should learn how to do that myself.) I rode Meshack again since Christine let me choose. I suppose as I get more comfortable riding, I should ride Will occasionally, simply to get the experience of riding another horse.

Anyway, we started out walking as usual, but didn't go very far before we went into posting trot. I think we did a few downward transitions at this point, but I don't really remember. Maybe I'm getting familiar enough with them, that I don't really think about them any more. Hopefully, that's a good thing. Then we did some sitting trot. I think I'm finally getting the hang of the sitting trot. Oh I still have a long ways to go, but at least I don't feel like I'm just bouncing around on the horse's back anymore. I actually feel like I'm moving with him... most of the time. I still get out of sync and bounce occasionally. And I'm sure that as I practice it more, I can get even smoother movement with the horse, but I'm pretty happy with the progress that I've made. Of course, Meshack doesn't exactly have a huge trot, so we'll have to wait and see what happens the first time I try to sit a trot on a bigger, bouncier horse. I'm afraid it will be very "interesting". We did some downward transitions from the sitting trot which, as usual, didn't work as well as from the posting trot. I think I'm making some progress, but it's not terribly obvious.

I think we did a couple of trot circles (my memory of last night's lesson really isn't as clear as it ought to be, sorry), and then Christine asked if I wanted to try and canter a bit. She offered to let me do it in the arena, but I think she saw the fear in my eyes, and so she suggested that we do it in the round pen. Once in the round pen, we worked on getting a fast trot from Meshack and then asked him to canter. It was a little difficult to get him to canter, but not too bad. And in this case, it is probably completely my fault since I really don't know how to ask for a canter and sit it properly yet, and so I'm probably confusing Meshack with mixed signals. Anyway, he finally went into canter and it was actually a lot easier to ride than his fast trot. When Christine told me to slow him down, I really didn't want to. I was actually enjoying cantering. I probably wasn't doing it very well, but I wasn't scared. But I listened to Christine and slowed him back to trot and then we changed directions in order to canter on the other lead. At this point, the lesson started to go downhill.

Admittedly, this second direction was Meshack's weaker lead, but I think most, if not all, of the problem was mine. I just couldn't get Meshack to go into canter and when I finally got a canter, it felt like he was going to run me into the fence so I got a little scared. This time when Christine told me to slow to trot, I was relieved. We switched directions again to go back to Meshack's better side. But now I was having just as much trouble on this side as I had had on the other. I did get another canter, but it was awkward and felt subtly wrong to me. At this point, Christine figured that both Meshack and I had had enough of cantering so we went back into the arena and worked on trot circles again.

I guess I was tired or dehydrated or over-heated or something, but I was having a lot of trouble just getting Meshack to go where I wanted him to go at the speed I wanted him to go. Christine suggested "clucking" to Meshack rather than just kicking him harder (Sorry Meshack). But despite trying to "cluck", "kiss" and make other encouraging noises, I couldn't seem to make quite the right sound. I finally just started saying, "trot" and that worked. But it made me feel bad to have to resort to vocal cues. And my steering was off as well. My trot circles were even less circular than the first time I tried them. Also, Christine said that I needed to work on keeping my hands more stable at the trot. They were moving up and down too much. On a more positive note, my downward transitions were working better than usual. (I think Meshack was tired as well.) I finally got one decent circle and Christine decided that was a good place to end the lesson. I agreed.

It WAS hot that evening. The thermometer in Ryan's car read 104 on the way to the lesson and 103 on the way home. So I suppose I could blame my problems near the end of the ride on the heat. But it was probably just me getting tired and being careless about keeping hydrated. I still feel like I learned a lot. And sometimes you learn more from when things don't work out right than when everything goes the way it's supposed to. Though, at the time, it can be rather frustrating. I do wonder if part of my problem with remembering the lesson may relate to being dehydrated or overheated during the lesson. When the body is stressed, the mind doesn't work as well.

However, there was a fairly amusing addendum to the lesson. On the way home, Foxfire told me that when I was having trouble getting Meshack to trot, Christina had leaned over to him and told him,"Teach your wife how to cluck." So as we were driving, Foxfire was trying to teach me to "cluck". For some reason, I just couldn't seem to make the right sound, and things degenerated into us just making silly noises at each other. After a significant amount of rampant silliness, I finally did figure out how to "cluck" properly. So hopefully, the next time I need to "cluck" at a horse, I'll be able to do it properly. :-)