Side effects in Well now

It is a good thing that the young have no idea about growing older.
It would scare the living shit out of them.

Like many aging souls, I take a cornucopia of prescribed chemicals on a regular basis. Some keep me alive now. Some attempt to keep me going for more years than I would have without them.

One of my pills, a huge white thing that’s a bear to choke down, is a necessary evil. It helps regulate my blood sugar, but, just for fun, it also makes me hideously nauseous on a very regular basis.

I take the horsepill first thing in the morning and, like clockwork, every morning during my crunch time processing the steady stream of late students into school, I get my own special brand of morning sickness.
(Imagine that. Morning sickness. Me. At my age and with all my missing parts. How bizarre!)

I’m usually fairly good about plowing through without letting the boys see that there’s more than just their tardiness that’s put a bad taste in my mouth. I have, however, upon the fairly rare occasion, put on a show for the amazed and amused young men on the other side of my desk. Watching Ms. Mack matter of factly retch into her waste basket is really so much more fun than sitting in class.
But whatcha’ gonna do? That’s my life, in all its regurgitory glory.

Another of my pills gives me vertigo. I’m not sure if it’s the one that lowers cholesterol or the one that helps protect my kidneys from one of the other drugs, but it doesn’t matter. I need to take it, so I take it whatever it is, and deal with moving slightly drunk upon the odd occasion.

Actually, though, there is one specific movement that almost invariably sets my head reeling. All I have to do is go to bed and, with the simple motion of tilting my head, the world begins to spin.

It used to unnerve me completely. I’d grab the bed and swallow a wave of panic until the earth stopped moving. Also, before I realized it was a pharmacological reaction, I was terrified it was something else, like a brain tumour or cancer of the inner ear.
(Hey, I’m a legal druggie. I’m bound to suffer from some strange mental side effects too. Under these circumstances, hyper-hypochondria is understandable.)

Now, though, now that I know it’s just a harmless side-effect, a physical phenomenon explored by the medical community and explained in the prescription insert fine print, I have moved from fear into acceptance and even somewhat eager anticipation.
Now I close my eyes, lay down my head, and relax.
I float in an imaginary spiral while the real world about me remains perfectly still.
I am gravity free for several lovely seconds.
Somehow it’s become a quite pleasant release into the process of sleep.

Amazing, the way life changes and you find yourself adapting.