I had a bit of a rough night with my cold. I woke up around 3:00 and I was really congested. So, I decided to take an antihistamine. As an aside, because of my diabetes and obesity (hey, a two-fer!), I can’t take most cold meds that are decongestants. I learned that the hard way about 15 years ago when I went to see a clinic doctor for a potential ear infection, only to find out my ear was fine — my blood pressure on the other hand was 162/105 or so. Heart attack and stroke territory. Because I had been maxing decongestatant with a stimulant in it. Oops. My BP had never been really problematic before, maybe a little high once in a while, but not alarming. On decongestant, I was JACKED.

In the day-to-day stuff, this generally only presents a problem if I forget to take some meds OR I get a cold. Cuz then there isn’t anything really good to take. Antihistamines help, but they dry my nasal passages out a little too well, and then I start wheezing or occasionally coughing like I have a speck of dust somewhere in my windpipe. With a strong gag reflex, we are starting to get into territory nobody needs from me.

But I took the antihistamine at 3:00, fell back asleep until 9:30, and finally woke up like I was doing a zombie walk the night before and the special K hadn’t left my system yet. Not that I know what that’s like, but as a wannabe writer, I’m imagining it with artistic license.

Anyway. I needed to hook my energy with some yogourt and a fruit cup before tackling the conference. You can see my full-day conference-related annotations on my PolyWogg site at https://polywogg.ca/day-2-of-bouchercon2025-in-new-orleans/. There were events still scheduled after I decided a quiet evening around the hotel would likely do me better.

I grabbed a simple burger, read for a while, picked up some snacks and drinks as well as more antihistamine tablets, and then sat down eventually to write my blog entries for the day.