Nil By Mouth

It never fails. The only time you truly have a desire to do something is when you’re not allowed to do it.

Last night I went in to see Not-Dr. Ruth yesterday for my annual exam, and while I was there, she scheduled me for a couple of blood tests to be done in the morning. Nothing major – a TSH test and T4 test to monitor the multinodal goiter (ewww!) she found a few years ago, a blood glucose test since my father recently developed adult onset diabetes, and a lipid profile because I’ve never had my cholesterol and triglycerides checked. As I am becoming a woman of a certain age (a poetic way of saying I’m getting older), I figured it might be a good idea for me to start paying attention to these things. (I’ve also had a few other symptoms that could be the result of my wacky thyroid, and I thought it would be best to eliminate that possibility before looking into other causes.)

While I was making the appointment with the receptionist, I asked if there was anything I needed to do to prepare for the test. She glanced at the orders that Not-Dr. Ruth had written out. “Nothing by mouth after midnight.”

No big deal, I thought to myself. I would just go home, have dinner, and go to bed early. (Mind you, early for me is before 1:00 am.) It was only a few hours.

Apparently I’d forgotten my last run-in with the words “nothing by mouth after midnight.” The last time was before the surgery on my ankle, where I’d popped my last Percocet at 11:45 pm, hoping that it would last until the anesthesiologist put me under. Fat chance. I woke up around 5:30 in the morning, my ankle screaming with pain, unable to take anything to relieve it. I spent the next few hours watching cable, drifting in and out of sleep, watching VH1. (I learned to despise Kelly Clarkson during my stay at my parents’ house, as “Miss Independent” was playing every minute that Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” and Coldplay’s “The Scientist” wasn’t.)

Last night was no different. After returning last week’s rentals and killing some time at Blockbuster, I headed home to ponder dinner. And that was when I started to worry. Would the cheesy mettwursts in the refrigerator send my LDL levels spiraling upward into the stratosphere? What would a cheese quesadilla do to my triglycerides? I settled on a veggie burger with the super high fiber bread as a makeshift bun, figuring that was the healthiest option, and settled in to watch Mean Girls.

10:30 pm – I’m out of Diet Coke. I elect not to open another one, since I’m going to try to get to sleep early tonight. (Yeah, like a whopping can of Diet Coke is going to affect me. Given my giant coffee mug that holds an entire pot of coffee, a 12 ounce soda is just a drop in the bucket.) I opt for a bottle of water instead.

11:30 pm – Last drag of the day. I have no idea if smoking counts, but since cigarettes lead to dry throat, which leads to more water, I stub out my clove and take another swig from my water bottle.

11:45 pm – The water bottle is almost empty. If I open another one, I’ll still be drinking it after midnight. Time to ration.

11:55 pm – Last drink of water. Sigh.

12:01 am – Dammit. I’m still thirsty.

12:03 am – And I’m not tired in the least, either. One more smoke and I’ll… aw, crap. I hide the cigarettes under a pile of junk mail.

12:11 am – Kismet and Ma Huang come tearing through the living room, displacing all of the junk mail on the coffee table. I hide the cigarettes under the Yellow Pages. Move that, Drunken Master Kitty. I dare you.

12:35 am – I cannot sleep. Maybe I’ll just take a few Tylenol PM and drift off to Conan O’Brien. Oh, wait. NPO MN. (Hey, I did learn something in nursing school!)

12:45 am – Do not think about the fudge on the top of the refrigerator. Repeat, do not think of the fudge.

1:15 am – Um, the Starbucks espresso brownie is off limits too.

I finally managed to sleep, and what did I dream of? Food, of course. I woke up at 7:00 am starving, sleepily thinking of what to prepare for breakfast, only to remember that I couldn’t have breakfast until after they jabbed a needle in my arm. (This was not helped along by the constant mentions of how to create a holiday feast on Today while I was still in the just-awake-enough-to-hit-the-snooze-alarm phase. This Not awake/not asleep phase also resulted in me dreaming that I had ADHD. Damn you, Katie Couric!)

I don’t get it. I used to always skip breakfast. Heck, when I was a corporate drone, I often skipped breakfast and lunch, and would only eat dinner when Roger Mexico force-fed me fake chicken nuggets. Now suddenly, I can’t survive a whole ten hours without eating something? When did this happen?

Even worse, though, was the fact that I still couldn’t have anything to drink. No water, no juice, and no coffee. I am not the most pleasant person in the morning before caffeination, but my Abyss Boy coffee mug would have to stay home. (I did toss a can of Diet Coke in my messenger bag to keep me going for the five minute drive from the doctor’s office to work.)

To top things off, my allergies were acting up and I couldn’t breathe, but antihistamines were out of the question until after my appointment with the phlebotomist. I kept my fingers crossed, hoping that I wouldn’t sneeze, causing my head to explode.

TLong story short (too late!), the appointment went fine. They even managed to get me in earlier than my scheduled time, so I was able to make it to work by 9:30, at which point I filled my coffee mug and my water bottle and grabbed a pack of granola bars out of the cabinet before I even turned on my computer. I am now happily hydrated, caffeinated, and sated. (And my antihistamines kicked in, and I am able to breathe again.) The phlebotomist didn’t blow a vein in the process of doing the blood draw(for once!), and my arm is no longer hurting.

Now I can just concentrate on worrying about my test results. At least I can do it with a full tummy and a drink in my hand.