'Scuse me while I kiss the sky

Last week I was having a lot of achy muscle pain in my upper back, between my shoulder blades, and in my hips.  Achy achy achy.  Even when I would lie down in bed, it hurt.  I tried stretching, I took advil, but nothing seemed to be helping.

A, uh, friend of mine has had a bunch of surgeries, illnesses and injuries over the years for which he was prescribed pain meds, but he often doesn't take them.  So I asked my friend last Thursday night if he had any leftover pain medication that I could take for my back.

"No, but I've got a lollipop you can have."

A medicinal lollipop, if you catch my drift.

"Meh.  Nah, I'll just deal."

As the evening went on, however, I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

"So that lollipop thing.  Will it help me?"

"I don't know.  It'll help you sleep and probably make you forget the pain."

"OK, what the hell."

Now, let us step back to examine the sheer idiocy of this move.

I am barely a drinker (most of the time, if I have a beer or a glass of wine, I don't finish it) and I am definitely not a pot smoker or a user of any other drugs.  So my body is not at all accustomed to stuff that could make me loopy.  I've smoked pot a few times in my life, but I never really enjoyed it - rather than make me mellow, it just made me exhausted and often queasy.  Whatever it is that kills nausea in cancer patients so they can get some food down, it has the opposite effect on me.  Plus, I have no doubt that whatever I had a few puffs of over the years did not approach the strength or purity of what my friend gets at the dispensary, particularly the strength and purity of stuff designed to be ingested rather than smoked.

But there I was, blithely consuming this lollipop, which, as I have now learned from the University of Google, was strong even by the standards of regular THC consumers.  I ate it, then I went to bed.

I really do question my own sanity sometimes.

I went to sleep and felt fine for a while.  Then I half-woke up and just felt kind of buzzy.  Not unpleasant.  Then the buzziness got stronger, and my head and my limbs felt inordinately heavy, like I was lying in molassas, and I started to feel queasy. 

By 5 in the morning, I managed to lurch to the bathroom to puke up whatever I had in my stomach.  I lay on the bathroom floor for a while because it was too much effort to get up.  After 20 minutes, I got up and went downstairs to try to drink some water.  I wasn't able to hold it down, and then went to lie down on the couch because the stairs were too daunting.

J came downstairs to get ready for work at around 5:30.  He was surprised to see me up, and also a bit alarmed by the fact that I was grey in the face and had broken out into a cold sweat. 

"Duuuude,"  I moaned.

"What's going on?"

"That lollipop killed me.  I am so unbelievably fucked up and sick."

"Really?"

"I'm OK if I lie here with my eyes closed, but when I open my eyes, I want to throw up.  Sitting up is unthinkable."

"Jesus."

"Yeah."

He continued puttering about getting ready, and then started walking toward the door.

"NOOO!  You can't leave me!"  I wailed.

"What are you talking about?  I have to go to work."

"I cannot take care of the children in this condition.  I can't drive them to school.  If I showed up like this with them at school, the teachers would have me arrested.  Please."

He sort of huffed around for a few minutes, but texted his boss and got the OK to come in late.  He got the kids up and fed and dressed.

Poor Zeke was horrified by my condition.

"Mama!  What's wrong?  Are you sick?  Why are you throwing up?"  His eyes were wide and he kept coming over to rub my face. 

"I'm OK, honey.  I've got a bad tummy-ache, but I'll get better, don't worry.  Daddy's going to take you to school today.  Be a good boy and I'll see you later."

Luckily, that Friday was a flex day for me, so I didn't have to go to work.  I lay back down on the couch when J took the kids to school.

Then the window guy showed up.  He, too, was horrified by my condition, but I waved him off when he suggested that he could come back to install the windows on a day when I was feeling better.  So I dozed all day, with intermittent bouts of vomiting, while our new windows were installed.

It was 2 in the afternoon before I could sit up without puking.  It was Sunday afternoon before all traces of the queasiness left my stomach.  Seriously - I'm that much of a light-weight.

J called me Friday afternoon to check on me.

"Hey, baby.  How ya doing?"

"I'll live.  Not feeling great, but I'm not throwing up any more, so there's that."

"Hey!  Guess what?"

"What?"

"High Times magazine called.  They want to put you on the cover and nominate you for Stoner of the Year."

"Hmph."

No way, man.  I'm scared straight for sure.