Baby It's Cold Outside
The other day at work, I got so damn cold that it was painful. This is part of Rheumatoid Arthritis, and it isn’t like this all the time, but some days I will get a “chill,” and it will not go away.
Earlier this week, it was 20 degrees outside, and as I went to my office, I was shivering, which is not normal for me. I usually don’t mind the cold. As I spun the combination lock on the door and entered the correct combination of numbers, I thought to myself, “Stop shivering. You can wait a few seconds to get to your heater.” I mean, the urgency is almost like having to pee badly.
When I got into my office, still wearing a polo, black hoodie, and lined jacket, I sat down, turned on my heater, put on my gloves, and huddled around the heater for a couple of minutes, at least so I could get warm enough to log on to all my computing assets.
As I sat in front of the heater, and read the thermometer on the desk, which read 75.6° Fahrenheit, thinking to myself, look, this is all in your damn head. There is no way in the world that you are cold sitting in front of the heater, wearing three layers and gloves. The problem is that I have experienced this twice before, once landing me in the ER, and it just doesn’t go away. I just don’t suddenly get warm again. No, it will last all day long and into the night. As I was sitting there, I knew that I could guarantee that I would climb into bed that evening and shiver for a while until I either fell asleep (sleeping medications are great) or I warmed up.
The time it landed me in the Emergency Room was when I had Serotonin Syndrome, and after 30 minutes like this, my wife called the “Ask a Nurse” for my insurance, and the nurse said to take me to the ER. I got to the ER, and they didn’t mess around with it. The other time this happened, it took me about an hour to get warm; it was about 45 minutes this time.
The first time I experienced this cold was about 10 years ago when we were winter camping in Boy Scouts. I was a Scout Master, and when we climbed into our tents and sleeping bags, it was just slowly flurrying. About 1 a.m., I’m awakened by one of our boys, screaming “Help, get off me”, over and over. I’m wearing my underwear and a pair of shorts. Thinking that there was something serious going on, I quickly got out of my sleeping bag, and I scrambled to get out of my tent. There are several inches of fresh snow on the ground, but I quickly stand up, again, only in shorts and no shoes. I take a second to figure out which tent the boy is in. I figured that out, got to his tent entrance, and announced that I was going to unzip the tent and enter. The other boy in the test is now awake, and he helps the screaming boy. Come to find out, the boy was sleeping in a mummy bag for the first time, he woke up because he needed to go pee and his bag had him “locked” inside. The other boy in the tent helped him, and all is now well.
I return to my tent, cleaning the snow off the front as it is snowing heavily now. I get into my tent and climb into my bag, trying to get warm. Sure enough, I was so damn cold that I had a problem getting warm. I got dressed and made my way to the troop tent, which had a large propane heater. I sit next to the heater for about 10 minutes, and my son comes and joins me. He heard the screaming and was trying to get out of his bag and tent when he heard I had it all under control. I sat in front of that damn heater for several hours, before heading back to my tent. A few hours later, everyone gets up, and we tell them we are leaving early, as they are now projecting over a foot of snow.
*** Note*** For the record, the Boy Scouts can and do camp in heavy snow. However, this was a camping trip for several different units, and the leaders running the event decided it was time for everyone to head home out of caution.
I guess now, I freaking hate cold, ugh.
