Hibernation

To understand my need to hibernate, you need to know a bit about my mental state. And my physical state, for that matter.

I'm 53. I'm fat. I have asthma. I'm anemic. I have generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), which is exacerbated by the death of my husband five years ago; they call this "primary grief reaction: anxiety". I have a tendency toward seasonal affective disorder (SAD). I have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) as a legacy of a giardia infection back in 1992 (did you know those little assholes can live up to 20 minutes in a chlorinated swimming pool?), and I'm prone to upper respiratory crud - sinusitis and the like. And my vitamin D levels are low even by Seattle standards.

I'm not counting (probable) ADHD or ASD here, because those are not mental illnesses; they're just differences. But the fact that I am both lactose intolerant and allergic to whey (one of the two main proteins in cow's milk) adds to all that up there. And, y'know, 2021 and pandemics and blah blah blah... all that is a factor too.

It sounds like I'm a mess and to some extent that's true. But they're minor issues, really; the biggest problem is that they pile on and I end up in a vicious circle of colds changing to sinus infections, which I treat with antibiotics, which mess with my gut, and so on. Around and around we go.

Death of a thousand paper cuts.

This didn't happen in 2020; I presume this is because I never caught a cold as my job (in those germ factories known as public school) was closed up. I never went anywhere, I never saw anyone (let alone children - and my own two weren't going anywhere and bringing stuff home either), and on the rare occasions when I was out and about, I had a mask on.

I am fully vaccinated against Covid (need a booster as soon as I can find one) and flu and all the rest of my shots are up to date. And I'm masking and sanitizing and etc. But I'm back at work, with children, and some of my students are a) too young to vaccinate (that changed this week, assuming their parents choose to do the right thing for everyone), and b) too young to consistently mask properly. I've lost track of how many times I told that one little sweetie to pull it up over her nose.

So in September, I got a cold, which morphed into a sinus infection, and then I got the stomach flu (gastroenteritis), which triggered the worst IBS attack I've had in a couple of decades. So there I was, sick as the proverbial dog, able to keep down rice and bananas and water.

I made a decision.

Coffee upsets my stomach on the best days, never mind when it's already unsettled, and caffeine is a diuretic, so my dehydrated self needs exactly none of that. By the time it occurred to me that I could still have decaf, with non-dairy creamer, I was already through most of the withdrawal symptoms, so it simply wasn't worth it to me. And I had already started an elimination diet, to see what my IBS food triggers are these days. So I put coffee on the BAD - DO NOT EAT list, and I only miss it on dreary November mornings when I'd rather sleep than drive a school bus.

I've lost eighteen pounds (the first eight were water loss, but that's stabilized). My BAD - DO NOT EAT list is down to coffee, artificial sweeteners, super fatty foods, cruciferous vegetables (that's cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, that sort of thing), beans, and dairy (except yogurt, kefir, and very very small amounts of butter). The TO TRY list is pretty good, too, and I've color-coded the master list based on what I want to try next.

I can even have (tiny amounts of) sweets and peanut butter and cooked or veggie sushi and the like.

I'm eating far healthier than I was, sleeping better, over the caffeine withdrawal hump - but it's still November, it's still the Northern Hemisphere, and I... I am evidently a bear.