Pain. Lots of pain. Full body pain. And exhaustion. Needing twelve hours of sleep a day. And slowness of brain. My mind is on a loop repeating old rhymes I can’t remember the ends of.

I am allergic to nightshades. For the last six weeks I have been carefully avoiding them. I’ve been working out. I’ve been eating right. I’ve been exercising.

Finally, this Thursday I had a good day all day long and only needed seven hours of sleep. I was so excited. Friday was good too, pain free and energetic. I slept seven hours Friday night.

Saturday I ate out with the family and I forgot to ask them to put the tomatoes on the side. I had two dishes that had tomatoes on them. R and I removed the tomatoes, but I ate the food they had been placed on anyway.

Saturday night my legs hurt and I had trouble sleeping. I moved to the couch. When I got up Sunday morning I was having trouble walking, so I took an allergy pill.

Then for lunch on Sunday we went to a Mexican restaurant. (It was my dad’s birthday. We had tried NOT to go to one, but where we were trying to go was closed.) I got one bite with tomatoes in it. I may have gotten food that was cooked on the same grill as potatoes.

So yesterday afternoon I slept three hours, got up for church, played cards with friends, and was asleep before ten. Today I did not get up until ten minutes ago. I just didn’t have the strength/energy.

At the most, I have gotten the equivalent of a single slice of tomato over the weekend. And my legs hurt, my feet hurt, my lower back hurts, my neck hurts, and I am sluggish.

Just in case I forget WHY I don’t eat nightshades, hopefully this blog entry will remind me.

I am in so much pain I don’t want to go exercise. But I need to, desperately. So I am going to.

The question of the morning is, would taking an allergy pill take the edge off the pain without putting me to sleep?

And do I have enough energy to get off this couch and get outside and exercise?