Popsicle...

Somehow I've become a human popsicle.  I mean, as the house warms, I can tell you when it is 70 degrees, 71, 72.  My body is so very sensitive to heat and my symptoms begin to worsen the warmer it gets.  I've know that for a while, for years actually.  Now, though, I feel I have become a human popsicle. I might melt when it is warmer, but I also freeze when it is cooler.  Even the slightest bit cooler!

I think that I basically can live comfortably between 65 and 68 degrees.  Start increasing the temperature and my body responds.  Start lowering the temperature and my body responds.  I faint when I grow too warm, at times, so I would think that that is the greater misery.  However, I am feeling these days that being cold is worse.

It staggers me just how cold my skin can get.  I have a long sleeve shirt and a cable knit sweater on, but I can still feel the cold of my skin on the outside of my sweater!  The waves upon waves upon waves of chills is pure misery.

The best I can do, later, is warm the house to 60.  At least that is what I could afford last winter.  With all the dental expenses, I will have to see what this winter will hold.  But 60 is like 10 to me.  At least, that's what comes to mind.  Right now, it is 59 and I think that you could freeze food on my skin.

You know, I grew up in Texas, where the summers are blistering hot.  You can fry and egg on a sidewalk or bake cookies on the dashboard of your car.  Those images come to mind when my face is flushing ... or, these days, my right ear.  But the inverse also plays across my mind as I try to find a way to warm my skin.  In case you were wondering, friction doesn't help.

I own two heating pads, one for upstairs and one downstairs.  Actually, I own three, but the third is a neck-and-shoulders one for my post-migraine protocol.  I wish I could have heating pad boots and heating pad gloves and heating pad shirts and heating pad pants.  As it is, I concentrate on keeping my core warm and dream of days when winter has passed.

Of course, during summer, I long for winter to come.
Or at least I used to do so.

I wish I were a poet, or at least a lyrical writer, so that I could weave a tale of my chilly wretchedness in such as way as to leave frost on your breath.  Alas, I am not.

For now, I will say that I spent much of this evening battling the air across my skin, especially the air creeping up the sleeves of my sweater and the folds of the blanket I have across my lap.  Air is my enemy ... except the air that I long for to more easily enter my lungs.  Or my alveoli or whatever it is that is not functioning in said lungs.  SIGH.

Iamanauseatedpopsicle.
How long can a name change name be??