Tuesday, November 14, 2006

parched

I had my bloodwork drawn this morning, at an excruciatingly early hour. And since I was already up, I then did a solid six more errands before I got home. Left the house at 6:30AM, made it back just before 11:30. It's nice to shop just as the stores are opening.

As odd as this may sound, I'm hoping those labs show something other than "normal", because I'm nowhere close. I am so dry these days that even with drinking constantly, I'm always thirsty. My lips hurt no matter how much DCT I slather on them. My hands are apparently impervious to lotions, even the really good ones that usually work when nothing else does.

That moisture has to be going somewhere. The air is not super-dry here, either. It has cooled a bit, but around here that means higher humidity, usually. The heat hasn't been on since last winter -- heck, most days at mid-day the a/c kicks on.

This is how bad it is: knowing I had a blood draw this morning, I forced fluids last night before I went to bed. When I got up, I drank 32 ounces of water before I left the house, and another 16 ounces on the way up. (So much for leaving early and bypassing the traffic; it took an hour.) The tech couldn't find any veins in either arm. Tried the right hand, and the veins were barely popping after what felt like 5 minutes in the tourniquet. Didn't matter, it rolled, and she couldn't stick it. Tried again with the left and finally hit one, but it took at least 2 minutes (seriously) to get half a tube, little dribbles trickling in to the rhythm of my pulse. It was freaky.

I've been a bad draw for most of my life, but usually hydrating well before hand gets around most of the problems. Today's experience was as if I hadn't had a thing to drink in half a day.

Right now? Thirsty as hell, and I just had two huge mugs of tea. This is unpleasant, so I hope it either shows up on the labs, or just goes away.

I wonder if it's related to the sinus junk (major post-nasal drip, moderate sinus congestion)? Perhaps tomorrow's doc (TMD guy) may have a clue about that.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

That's interesting. I'm going through pretty much the same thing, skin and lips so dry that they actually hurt, drinking like it's going out of style. I go in for bloodwork tomorrow.