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Daniel the sheep
Friday, March 25 2005
I went out to the radio station in Sharon, Connecticut again today for a relatively successful day of dealing with non-urgent loose ends. But the whole time I was there, and also during the drive out and back, I was plagued by horrible pressure headaches. They weren't debilitating in that I could carry on as normal even as their intensity would ramp up to maximum (usually over a period of five to ten seconds). Sometimes I'd feel vertigo, though I never really felt dizzy. At one point a wave passed over me that felt like mild nausea. With so much "going on" in my head it was difficult to focus on whatever I was doing, and I'd have to stop and remind myself what the next step needed to be. This mental component, easy to confuse with memory problems, was the most distressing of all my symptoms, though it was the most psychosomatic too. I would say my condition today was the worst it has been so far since my head troubles began. It caused me to wonder more seriously if I was perhaps experiencing a real organic malady.
This evening Gretchen and I went to visit our photogenic vegan Buddhist friends on Hill 99 in Woodstock for a little two-couple dinner party. It was going to be Ms. Vegan Buddhist's birthday tomorrow and we wouldn't be able to attend the party. One of the reasons Gretchen wanted to go there was to show me the household lamb. It seems someone had rescued a three week old Easter lamb from slaughter and it had ended up at the Hill 99 household, which acts as a stop on the animal rights underground railroad. The lamb's name is Daniel and he walks around with a diaper wrapped around the middle of his abdomen so as to catch his copious output of urine (it seems feces are less of an issue with lambs this age). He's an easy-going lad, happy sitting for long periods in somebody's lap. Sometimes when he strays too far from people he'll bleat. Other times he'll curl up in front of the heat vent in the bathroom next to his pile of hay. He seems engaged and relatively curious, but I wouldn't exactly call him playful.
For the first time in nearly a week I drank alcoholic beverages in the form of two glasses of wine. I was a little curious how my headaches would react, given my suspicion that they might be a symptom of my cessation of alcohol consumption. At first the headaches seemed to ebb, but then they came back with a vengeance, to the point where I just sat there and contributed nothing to the ongoing conversation. I suspect that even if these headaches are part of some sort of long-term alcohol withdrawal my drinking tonight provided little relief; it was too restrained and too buffered by food.
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