Chemical Imbalance

It's no fun being sensitive to chemicals. It's also hard to explain to doctors. Every time I'm being checked for something or other--my tendency toward gigantism, my vestigial tail, what have you--they always ask if I'm allergic to anything, and my only reply is, "No, but I'm really sensitive to medication." They look at me as if I've suggested that I just have heightened feelings about drugs, but really, almost any medication works fantastically powerfully upon me.

This is a fact I oughtn't share, I suppose; now my enemies know my one weakness. But I'm still up on account of a so-called harmless medication, so you get to hear about it.

We discovered this when I was about five. I was playing on one of those see-saw swinging contraptions that used to be found on children's swingsets before federal laws were put in place to protect children from swingsets. I decided--entirely reasonably--to get off the thing. I just didn't wait until it stopped. It proceeded to finish its swing, then whip back and crack me in the mouth, driving one of my baby teeth up into my gums.

Off I went to the oral surgeon, the friendliest-sounding person to which to take a toddler. They put me under to perform the surgery, which went well (though if you look at me carefully, you'll realize that the queasy feeling that results is caused by the left side of my face being roughly two and a quarter inches higher than the right). However, I didn't wake up for hours. It was the next day before they could get me to perform basic functions on my own. Scary stuff for my parents, I imagine, though I think I was grateful for the rest. I recall telling the purple tiger-mushrooms that came to bring me lemons and shish-kebabs that I was happy, anyway.

To this day, I have to be careful of what I take. A simple Sudafed, supposedly without harmful side-effects, makes me feel as if I'm on a tilt-a-whirl whenever I move my head, except my brain follows my eyes by about three seconds. I think the Generi-Phed I take 'cause it's cheaper and hasn't gone through the same rigorous testing as the original is even worse. I took the Walgreen's version of Ny-Quil (Wal-Quil, most likely--very imaginative) the other day and didn't know who I was for two days. So I don't take much medication when I'm sick.

But this bout of Captain Trips (one point for all you King fans out there who know the reference) has been beating me senseless. It won't go away. So I took Qal-Wil Daytime strength or whatever it was at around 10am. And here I am, sixteen and a half hours later, wired.

I'm going to go off and stare into the blackness for a few more hours before I have to get up later today. Hopefully my eyes will stay ratcheted open until I get home tomorrow night from class in Sun Valley. I wonder how much Chaucer I can remember through this drug haze...