NyQuil Adventures with Peter Ibbetson
Jan. 28th, 2026 08:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeRogan: well! That was exciting and awful!
I took NyQuil because I badly wanted a nap and to be able to breathe. What I got was twenty-four hours (and counting) of badness.
I did indeed get my nap! For five hours! Then I decided I really needed some food, got up... and went, “oh. Ohhhh this is bad,” and curled up directly on the floor.
“Are you okay?” My alarmed roommates asked. “Are you dizzy?”
“No?” What I was feeling was LIKE dizziness, but not. The world felt like it was swirling around me, but it wasn’t actually, and my body felt like a giant meat mech I’d never piloted before. And my stomach felt BAD.
“Are you nauseous?”
“I don’t know?” Then my stomach roiled. “Oh, yes. Yes, this is nausea.”
Cue me crawling to the bathroom and becoming best buds with the toilet for a while (as Tiptoe the cat lurked anxiously outside the door). Thankfully, that didn’t last too long, as my stomach was completely empty. I (very carefully) put some applesauce and tortillas into it, my roommate unrolled my bed, and I crawled into it with a basin in case the nausea came back. (It did not, probably because I moved very little.) Then I waited for the effects to wear off.
I have many times sung Biff’s praises for organizing our bedroom the way he has, but this time, I am extremely grateful that sick and stuck in bed, with the world swirling ominously around me like the Lovecraftian abyss, I was surrounded by my beloved artwork and my books in easy arm’s reach. I could even wrangle my desktop into my lap! ...if I was willing to stand up and move the peripherals, which I was not. (Every standing and motion required careful planning and anyway, what could be a LESS recuperative environment than the Internet right now?) I had my basin, my books, a water bottle, a mug of fresh ginger tea (leftover from when I made it for our roomy with food poisoning a few days ago), and I was warm and comfortable with solicitous roomies in earshot. I had nothing to be afraid of.
But now what? I didn’t want to sleep even more, or I wouldn’t sleep come night. I clearly could not be trusted to read the dense nonfiction I had been reading before, Mori’s ladybooks are hers and not mine, and that book on supernatural ministry and casting out demons just didn’t appeal.
And there, right by my little lamp, amongst our “in process” reading shelf (also instituted by Biff to insure shit would get read eventually), was Peter Ibbetson.
Turns out I had bounced off it before because I wasn’t in the right mind frame. The right mind frame is when you are sedated with terrible cold medicine, because hearing a century-dead Frenglish man tell me about his amaaaaazing childhood suddenly sounded fantastic. Yes, please, Mr. du Maurier, tell me all about your neighbors, the horsies, the smells of suburban Paris in the 1840s! Thank you, thank you, Mr. du Maurier!
It was the perfect read for this very unpleasant situation, and now I am over a third of the way through it. Thanks, Peter Ibbetson!
The NyQuil has mercifully mostly worn off now, twenty-four hours later. I’m still moving carefully, but I’m not afraid to stand up and walk around the apartment. But for real, never taking this stuff again, what a horrible experience.
I took NyQuil because I badly wanted a nap and to be able to breathe. What I got was twenty-four hours (and counting) of badness.
I did indeed get my nap! For five hours! Then I decided I really needed some food, got up... and went, “oh. Ohhhh this is bad,” and curled up directly on the floor.
“Are you okay?” My alarmed roommates asked. “Are you dizzy?”
“No?” What I was feeling was LIKE dizziness, but not. The world felt like it was swirling around me, but it wasn’t actually, and my body felt like a giant meat mech I’d never piloted before. And my stomach felt BAD.
“Are you nauseous?”
“I don’t know?” Then my stomach roiled. “Oh, yes. Yes, this is nausea.”
Cue me crawling to the bathroom and becoming best buds with the toilet for a while (as Tiptoe the cat lurked anxiously outside the door). Thankfully, that didn’t last too long, as my stomach was completely empty. I (very carefully) put some applesauce and tortillas into it, my roommate unrolled my bed, and I crawled into it with a basin in case the nausea came back. (It did not, probably because I moved very little.) Then I waited for the effects to wear off.
I have many times sung Biff’s praises for organizing our bedroom the way he has, but this time, I am extremely grateful that sick and stuck in bed, with the world swirling ominously around me like the Lovecraftian abyss, I was surrounded by my beloved artwork and my books in easy arm’s reach. I could even wrangle my desktop into my lap! ...if I was willing to stand up and move the peripherals, which I was not. (Every standing and motion required careful planning and anyway, what could be a LESS recuperative environment than the Internet right now?) I had my basin, my books, a water bottle, a mug of fresh ginger tea (leftover from when I made it for our roomy with food poisoning a few days ago), and I was warm and comfortable with solicitous roomies in earshot. I had nothing to be afraid of.
But now what? I didn’t want to sleep even more, or I wouldn’t sleep come night. I clearly could not be trusted to read the dense nonfiction I had been reading before, Mori’s ladybooks are hers and not mine, and that book on supernatural ministry and casting out demons just didn’t appeal.
And there, right by my little lamp, amongst our “in process” reading shelf (also instituted by Biff to insure shit would get read eventually), was Peter Ibbetson.
Turns out I had bounced off it before because I wasn’t in the right mind frame. The right mind frame is when you are sedated with terrible cold medicine, because hearing a century-dead Frenglish man tell me about his amaaaaazing childhood suddenly sounded fantastic. Yes, please, Mr. du Maurier, tell me all about your neighbors, the horsies, the smells of suburban Paris in the 1840s! Thank you, thank you, Mr. du Maurier!
It was the perfect read for this very unpleasant situation, and now I am over a third of the way through it. Thanks, Peter Ibbetson!
The NyQuil has mercifully mostly worn off now, twenty-four hours later. I’m still moving carefully, but I’m not afraid to stand up and walk around the apartment. But for real, never taking this stuff again, what a horrible experience.
