Romance:From Fat To Fatale(16)
This was when I regretted not taking religion more seriously. If I'd had the energy, I'd have prayed out loud. To anyone or anything. Might've considered the benefits of animal sacrifice or bargaining my soul for an ounce of relief. At that moment, I didn't feel like I had enough blood to spare for the signature on the contract.
The lady nutritionist sat next to me on the sagging cot and told me to breathe more deeply, an ice-cool towel on my forehead as she gently massaged my hands. I started to relax a little. The pain eased back a notch or two and then she moved to my feet. Now I don't know how you feel about having your precious, dainty little feet touched but I've always been very sensitive and ticklish in that area so, given the choice between having a foot massage and mud-wrestling a full-grown alligator, I'd always opt for the leotard and a mano-a-mano session with a thrashing, writhing, snapping armful of future handbag material.
No contest.
Maybe it was because I was already feeling exhausted and had my hands full with the blinding headache, but I have to admit that I didn't really notice my feet were being massaged. Not until the pain subsided dramatically and I realised that my sweaty soles and toes were beginning to feel pretty good, thank you very much. Wow.
That was a real surprise. According to the lady nutritionist, all that foot sensitivity was pretty much a result of the imbalances in my body. Should be possible to work on the feet without any pain or discomfort, she murmured, and then it could feel borderline heavenly. And she was right. It did. I couldn't help it but in the middle of the session I just nodded off.
It was about two in the morning and I could feel the airco's smooth currents of cooling air brushing my face as I waddled from my cot to the john for my first bout of sustained and punishing diarrhea. I know, I know. You're probably thinking 'No! Stop right there! Way too much information - again!' But you know I have to share this with you. This is what it was like. I must have been locked in there for about twenty agonising minutes and the force of the eruptions in such a confined space dramatically amplified the soundtrack. The accompanying moans and groans and curses punctuated the performance so there could be no mistake about what was taking place in the smallest room in the trailer.
You had to leave your embarrassment chip somewhere outside in the starlit wilderness because nature was taking its undeniable course and I felt like I was losing body weight big time. At one point I feared I might have shed half my digestive tract too but the cramps just kept coming and I kept hurrying back to the head and every time I emerged, there was the lady nutritionist in a long cotton night-dress, standing by with a cold compress for my forehead and a pitcher of cool water. Just keep drinking, she said. Nice and slow.
Dehydration is the real problem with diarrhea. She gave me some small tablets to replenish my tissue salts and I went back to my cot. It was a long, long night. In the morning, though, as the early sunlight filled the old trailer, things just got a whole lot worse.
I should really stand up right now in front of all the other penitents in the congregation and confess my sordid addiction. It was time to formerly admit my sins: Hello. My name is Misha and I am a poor misguided and miserable sinner because I am a (sob) sugar addict. Yes I am. And I was about to pay the price for my errant ways by going cold, cold turkey in the company of a demented madwoman masquerading as a nutritionist somewhere in the middle of nowhere and I knew for sure that I was in trouble. I was also hallucinating. Nothing too wild.
Not like some classical 70's flashback on the back of a bad acid trip, man, sea-horses riding the cliffs and dolphins calling me to swim in the sunbeams and Jimi Hendrix sprouting two heads and telling me everything was going to be cool, wild chile, because I was already dead. Nothing so prosaic and colourful.
Just a deep-seated conviction that my captor was planning to commit a major felony and bury the evidence in a drainage ditch at the back of the trailer. If I'd had the energy in my calorie-starved body, I'd have made my break, busted out of the joint and headed straight for the nearest candy store. I never understood what real cravings were like until I stopped feeding my little intestinal friends with their hourly uncut line of pure refined sugar. They turned mean.
They turned nasty. They started whispering messages in the deeper recesses of my aching brain cells. The recurring theme always involved mountains of sugar-dusted donuts, acres of candy, pavilions of sparkling, sugar-crusted cookies and oceans of sweetly melting chocolate. The professionals declare that our addiction to sugar is just as strong and difficult to break as any other substance abuse.
Now I believed them. The lady nutritionist was always there though.
Checking my pulse. Monitoring my blood pressure like some dedicated mechanic at the Indie 500 pit-stops. Keeping me fuelled and hydrated. Souped up with vegetable broth, a soothing hand or a cooling compress, a soft word and a steely-edged commitment to get me through this ordeal.
The nausea and diarrhea were pretty severe because my body was witnessing a slow-motion internal mass extinction event. The bad guys were starving and their dead and decaying micro-bodies were releasing plenty of toxins as a farewell gesture to their former habitat. Now we're all grown up here so......would it be OK if we dispense with some of the niceties and sensibilities? That's great because we might get a little graphic here. You see, I've come across some fairly extreme cases of bad breath in my time. My brother Miclav, for instance, could stop a charging lion with one yawn and there was a guy in high school who could clear a corridor with just one breathy Hello. Now there's an interesting point.