Hello, World. Again.
I had all of the best intentions to re-start a blog with gusto in the past week. However, I’ll make it clear very quickly why that didn’t happen… and why it’s very possible that the title of this blog may become more than a bit ironic.
Ever wonder about the official definition of a “hard reset?” Here’s what you find when you google the definition:
“A hard reset, also known as a factory reset or master reset, is the restoration of a device to the state it was in when it left the factory. All settings, applications and data added by the user are removed.”
Strictly from a chemical perspective, my brain ran headlong into its own version of a hard reset this past week.
Monday morning, September 21. Unofficially, the first day of autumn… and I was in a foul mood. I often am as the fall begins. I love summer. Baseball, lighter Northeast traffic during rush hour, grilled meats… what’s not to love? There were more specific reasons for my mood boiling on the surface. Not important for this post, but maybe more some other time. This is about chemicals, first and foremost stimulants.
Ah, stimulants. My second favorite drug behind depressants, and my favorite for mornings. For fun, let’s start keeping score of the stimulants Mr. Coffee Dog imbibed on this lovely morning. Leading off, as always on a weekday, is 72 mg of Concerta, a.k.a. Methylphenidate, or Adderall. Before you ask: yes, it’s legal. I’ve had a valid prescription since Middle School. I washed down the pills with a cup of Donut House coffee straight from my morning girl Friday, the Keurig.
I was chasing this buzz at 5:30 am, with every intention of exercising. That didn’t happen. One cup of coffee down, and my fourteen year-old daughter awoke early to run an old-fashioned, between-the-tackles play from the teenager playbook:
a) Stop what I was doing, RIGHT NOW, and
b) Go get her money to pay for something she needs to pay for TODAY. In this case, it was Homecoming Dance tickets. She has a date. God help me.
So goodbye workout, and hello errand. Off to the Wawa for a free ATM. By the way, Wawa has amazing coffee. Never pass it up.
(Stimulant score: 72mg Concerta, 34 Oz. of coffee.)
The errand turns into dropping off the children to school, which turns into being late for my hour-long commute. I arrive at my office in Owings Mills late for a 9 A.M. meeting after rolling out of bed before the sun is up. Not cool.
This is the top of the frustration cake. There are other layers, many of them. And like a good tiramisu, I tend to soak them on a daily basis with various morning coffees and evening cocktails. Or to get back to the technology metaphor – I’ve got a pharmaceutical app for that.
The reset came about 10:30 am.
I hung up from a conference call and noticed a ringing in my ears, along with a little dizziness. Neither of these things are unusual for me, especially with caffeine and seasonal allergies. But the little feeling of vertigo was just a warm-up. The world began to turn like a playground wheel that the class clown dares everyone to stay on no matter how fast he turns it. In the space of sixty minutes I had gone from shrugging off the start of a head cold to cold sweat. I called my wife, and without even listening to my words she heard my tone of voice and said: “I’m coming to get you.”
All I needed to do was get to my office elevator and meet her in the lobby to get to a doctor. Instead, I stood to walk out, dropped my hands to my knees and felt the worst vertigo of my life.
A little something about me: I have a loud, loud voice. It isn’t that I talk loudly on purpose; I just have big, German-Welsh vocal cords I inherited from my Dad. Even when he raised his voice, the window glass of our living room shook. So when I throw up, I’m a bit of a screamer. It’s purely involuntary, completely unavoidable and (I’m told) akin to the sound you would imagine a person makes if they’re being turned inside-out like a reverse-able sweater. I scared a lot of people. Three co-workers picked me up and carried me downstairs to my wife, who drove me, still ralphing nothing but air, to the ER.
The rest I remember like a bad hospital drama episode where the director tries to be “edgy” and films from a first-person shaky-cam perspective. Except, since the vertigo was relentless, the camera can only point straight down. Head CT. Cardiac enzyme tests. IVs, waiting for a bed to be admitted. You’ve seen TV.
They ruled out the big stuff that can kill a guy in his forties – heart attack and stroke. Narrowing down the symptoms, the verdict came in late Monday evening: a severe attack of viral vestibular neuritis, or labyrinthitis. I was prescribed high doses of anti-vertigo medications and given a lot of fluids (apparently I was dangerously dehydrated – imagine!). And then I did what everyone in hospital rooms do: waited to feel better. Slept when I could. Changed channels. You’ve seen TV.
What I didn’t understand while trying to keep the world still was that aside from the anti-vert and normal things a human needs to stay alive, I hadn’t noticed what I wasn’t getting anymore: my regular doses of legal uppers and downers. Whatever withdrawal might have come my way was drowned out in the nausea and dizziness from the virus chewing on my right inner ear. By the time I returned home, those doses had been reduced enough for me to notice that the buzzes I gave my brain were gone. I’ll be honest – it had been so long since I had felt… even. Probably before the kids were born and had colicky infancies, thus giving birth to my nickname. My energy was even, level, like when I was a kid. Reset.
I have to tell you, it’s like reconnecting with an old friend. Even during the last two weeks while still recovering my vision and balance, I woke up when I needed to and went to bed without my usual restless struggle into sleep. Walking a straight line and holding my attention to a piece of writing (like this one) is still a challenge, but it’ll come. None of the specialists have used code phrases like “setting proper expectations” or “permanent damage.” This will go away.
What I don’t want to go away is the hard reset of the chemicals that make up how I power my thoughts up or down. Gone are the mornings of filling the thermos with three k-cups of dark roast. Because they only lead into the residually stressful evenings that demand a stiff Jack and Coke. And the system gets clogged again. I like even – more than I thought I would.
Of course, lurking beneath this newly zen me are the old layers of stress, demanding to be heard, only now without a little liquid energy or courage. I’ll have to square my shoulders and lean into them, caffeine-free and sober.
Wish me luck.
