That would be the sips of soup or smears of peanut butter you were planning to use to reintroduce your shrunken stomach to the concept of food, after fourteen days.
Not much of a meal. After fourteen days you do not want a real meal.
Recap: That was the first day of glyphosate poisoning when I thought it might be a cold and wanted to starve it out, a Monday. And the second day when I grabbed some food from Food Lion, the store that's known mainly for tacky pricing strategies and rude employees but still has a reputation for salmonella also. I did swallow that, but I did not digest it. And the middle of the night before day three, when I woke up with acute pain all through the midsection that has gradually subsided, but never for a minute gone away, since then. And the rest of the week before last, and the rest of Holy Week, inclusive.
I am by nature a person who does not have serious reactions to bacteria like salmonella. If I notice them I take some charcoal and water, and poof, they are gone. Except that the glyphosate reaction was still paralyzing my digestive tract, so for the first four days water didn't get down.
If you are going to be sick for a week or less, eating as little as possible is a good idea. If you are sick for more than a week, reactions to starvation start to offset the reactions to whatever was wrong with you in the first place. At this point doctors start attaching IV's and nurses start coaxing you to sip soup.
Last week someone took me to Wal-Mart. I walked through the store and accomplished my main purpose, but while standing in the checkout line behind somebody who had two full carts, I became faint, after my fashion.
I'm one of those people whose pulse, respiration, blood pressure and so on can fluctuate enough that, under stress, I could just crash to the ground and give myself a concussion, the way Hillary Clinton described herself doing. Only I'm not trying to look tough enough to be President of the United States, so when I feel as if that might happen, I forget about dignity and etiquette and just sit down, on the floor or the ground or wherever. If necessary I might proceed to lie down. I've never lost consciousness while lying down. In a few minutes I usually feel safe standing up again.
So in Wal-Mart I sat down on the floor, and then got up and ran into the bathroom.
Today someone different was supposed to have taken me to Wal-Mart. I was looking forward to the trip, trying to decide between cold soup and peanut butter, but while staggering about the yard I thought, "No walking in Wal-Mart. I'll have to use one of those motorized carts, instead." I no longer have the strength to walk across Wal-Mart.
The person did not arrive.
I thought, "I am not going to try to walk across the front yard again. I didn't think I'd reached an age where life had become painful to me and burdensome to others, but hello, for two weeks I've been in pain and if others wanted me to live I'd be eating now. It is time to stop trying to stay alive. It is enough, God. Take back my life and let me be among my loved ones tomorrow."
I do not want to stop trying to stay alive. That is just part of the starvation reaction I have been observing. The fat that was doing the most good melted off first. My now fat-free lower back has formed abrasions, but so far not pressure ulcers, from lying down all the time. I have pins and needles everywhere, all the time. Both ears have locked up so I hear only about half of what I know is there to be heard. I'm losing some ability to focus my eyes, also. Any form of non-success, like the Googlitch that occurred when I was typing the first line of this post, makes me want to lie down and howl out loud like a baby.
There are actually things to eat in the front yard. It's just that, up until yesterday afternoon, I would not have been able to eat them, and this afternoon, going out to graze seemed more trouble than it could possibly be worth. I was thinking very carefully about the amount of effort needed to mix the liquids off canned chicken and canned beans to make a safe soup, versus the amount needed to eat peanut butter.
So although a part of me still knows that missing one more meal won't make much difference in the long run, and that at least a few relatives would have squeezed a visit into their busy schedules if we hadn't expected this person to take me to Wal-Mart, the disappointment still drained off a lot of what energy I had.
Maybe youall can do Glyphosate Awareness all by yourselves. Maybe you should. I do not have the energy to care.
I do not want anything remotely like "professional help." Not even the Life Saving Crew bringing me food, which might be glyphosate-tainted and make things worse. When a simple medical procedure can fix things, I'll take it. When staying alive becomes more painful than it's worth, I want to be left alone.
The one thing that would make me positively suicidal would be anybody rushing around to offer "help for suicidal depression." I do not have suicidal depression. I have glyphosate, salmonella, and starvation--three completely different things.
A person who wanted to motivate me to try to survive today might say, "Please tell me exactly what you would buy if you were at Wal-Mart or any other stores you like., I will leave it at the front gate. I will not step onto your property but will leave the food and go away. Nobody would be watching if you were to crawl across the yard in an undignified manner, as very sick people do."
Also, "Please don't even worry about buying a truck, even if you get a grant for that specific purpose. Please let your friends and well-wishers buy the Nichols Building for you. Please stay alive long enough to enjoy the one thing you had left ahead of you in this life, now."
Also, "Glory be to God that we should live to see anyone as sick as you are who is so incredibly kind and thoughtful as not to want to spew salmonella onto us. We certainly won't have a critical word to say about you again in this lifetime! Whether God makes any value judgments among the saints or not, we will certainly never let anyone speak to you as if you were in any way less than Teresa of Calcutta."
That might help. That's the sort of thing we say to older people when they are ready to join the ones they loved best, and we want them to stay in this world with us.
I was always taught that anything we tell other people we are going to do, we must do, or fail miserably and shamefully trying to do. In any case. Even children; even animals who understand enough words to have an idea what we meant. But it is especially important not to disappoint older, sicker people.
Now I know why.
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