When I woke up this morning I didn’t feel as dead tired as I did yesterday but I didn’t yet feel re-energized or motivated to take on the day. I ate breakfast, watched The Dog Whisperer, and laid down again around 9AM.

I slept 5 1/2 hours, surprising both myself and my mother.

When I woke up again, I still didn’t feel up-to-speed and I spoke with Mom about it. I told her how I felt like I was being lazy, but also that I’ve been congested and coughing and had a weird, not-quite-scratchy-or-tickley feeling in my throat, and so I wondered if I was fighting off a cold, or developing allergies, or being affected by the record high levels of air particulates the valley has had for the last 22 days, perhaps sensitive to it because of the state of my respiratory system.

She said she thought I had been worse off than both of us thought. I asked her what she meant by that and she said, “I think if you’d have done much more [crack], you’d have died.”

“Nah,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

“I do,” she said, letting her I’m-a-registered-nurse tone peek through from underneath. “The amount of time it’s taken you to regain your strength, as an adult male…”

“The other weird thing,” I said, getting back to the subject at hand, “is that I’ve been drinking water like crazy. I must have gotten up four times in the night to pee the last glass out and drink another. I can’t catch up.” I told her how I often feel dehydrated and that my body doesn’t seem to utilize liquids well because they go right through me.

“Those are the two main indicators for diabetes testing,” she said. “How long has that been going on?”

“Not like in the last 24 hours, but I’ve been like that for years,” I said. “I have wondered if I had diabetes, but I don’t think I do; wouldn’t I faint or something if I didn’t eat for a while?”

“Later on, as it progresses,” she said. “And that would explain the exhaustion you’ve been experiencing. You need to see an internist—take a list of symptoms and have him address each one.”

“I don’t think I need to see an internist,” I said.

I took the dog for a walk, ate crab casserole (that I joked about being “crap casserole”), paid some plastic bills online, and that’s about all I’ve done all day.

I’m frustrated about losing precious time. I’ve lost so much already and I have so much to do. And, like I said before, I’m tired of being tired.