BoomerGirl Diary

This is a continuation of my helpful hints of things to avoid in life. I won't lay some guilt trip on you about what you should do. Oh, no. I'll tell you want you shouldn't do. I consider this my calling, my quest ...

I went to our kitchen medicine/vitamin drawer the other day and spotted a big old bottle of chewable, orange-flavored Vitamin C at the back of the drawer. Since we'd started taking multivitamins, I'd forgotten that they were there. I checked the label. The chewables had a whopping 1000 mg of Vitamin C. It sounded refreshing and good for me. I popped one in my mouth and chewed.

It tasted horrible ... chalky, bitter. I could only get half a pill down and thought that they must have gone bad. I spit the rest out in the sink and tossed the bottle in the garbage. I went back upstairs to work in my office.

About a half-hour passed and I started to feel kind of funny. My face was all tingly and hot. Nothing new there. Hot flashes and I were old friends, so I turned on my little personal fan and aimed it at my face. It had no effect, so I opened both office windows and drank some cold water. Nothing helped. Now my neck, my back, my whole upper body was on fire. And I was itchy all over as well, and I rolled up my sleeves to look for welts and sped to the bathroom and peered into the mirror. My face, my back, my upper arms were red and blotchy.

What the hell was this? I ratcheted up my personal terror alert level from blue to orange and wondered about the protocol for calling 911 under these circumstances. Do you ask them to send the paramedics or a fire engine? And should you call right when you burst into flame, or should you wait until after a full limb has burned off just to make sure that you're not overreacting?

It was then that I remembered the fact that we buy Niacin in 55-gallon drums, and in order to fit them into our medicine drawer, we parcel it out into smaller, long-empty vitamin bottles. I also remembered The Sainted One's reaction to Niacin. He takes it for high cholesterol – two pills at a time – and has done so for years. Sometimes he flushes after he takes them. He complains when that happens, and shifts around in his shirt and heads for someplace cooler until it passes. I've expressed scant sympathy when this occurs since I could never believe that his "flushes" were anywhere near the blazing center-of-the-sun heat that I've experienced as a menopausal woman.

I'll be sympathetic in the future. I only swallowed half a pill and ended up reacting like the offspring of Joan of Arc and St. Vitus.

So heed my advice and remember another thing to not do before you die: Do not take your spouse's medication by mistake.