Week 5, Day 3

For Friday the 13th, the pain in stomach central drives away all memories of the persistent dry-mouth of Thursday the 12th. Will soup soothe it away? Not really. Bread and cheese? Recoil right away from the cheese. Some unopened homemade apple butter in the back of the fridge is much more agreeable. 
But after lunch the pain remains and there's only one thing I want to do -- crank up the electric blanket and snuggle back into bed.  I'd been jolted out of bed too soon, anyway, in the early part of the 9 a.m. hour when the plumber arrived to install a new hot water tank. He was supposed to show up around 11 a.m., but assignments opened up for him. 
The plumbing part goes well enough, aside from the sopping wet instruction book. But not the electricals. State code requires a hard-wired CO detector these days. As one is attached to an empty slot in the circuit breaker panel, half the power to the kitchen switches off, a situation that doesn't get fully corrected until evening. 
Meanwhile, I'm determined to catch some theater, despite the below-zero wind chills and that stomach pain. It's the final weekend for "The Graduate" at the Alleyway Theater downtown and longtime friend Connie Caldwell has been getting raves as the luscious, manipulative Mrs. Robinson. Well-deserved raves. I manage to survive both acts of the play, despite a feeling that I might have to slip away and give back some of my lunch. I'd love to stick around after the play to congratulate Connie, but I don't dare tempt the fates.
Aren't the steroids supposed to be suppressing the nausea? When I call health proxy Bill Finkelstein and ask that question, he says I should be taking the anti-nausea pill too -- the generic Compazine. I wash one down with apple juice and apple sauce, which are about the only things that appeal to me at this hour. 
I'm in bed before midnight, still unsure of my stomach. By 1:30 a.m., I'm awake, belching. Except it turns into more than that. And so it goes all night. Instead of rising every 90 minutes for bladder relief, I'm hurrying to the porcelain altar every hour and a half, grateful for the sweetness of the apple sauce and apple butter and praying that this won't happen again, a prayer that doesn't get fulfilled until dawn.