Seems this is a thing with a lot of power, life giving and life taking power

Its not like I didn’t know hydration was important, for a decade I have been carrying around a water bottle that syncs to my cell phone

To this day people ask “why is your water bottle glowing?”; it glows to remind me to drink: “hey you bozo who spent good $$ to purchase me to stay hydrated, give me a 17.5 ounce curl!”

I have definitely understood, lived, felt the power of staying hydrated for alertness, stamina, all that stuff for myself, in my own body

So its somewhat mind blowing I have to learn this lesson again with regards to Matt, I am, frankly, dumbstruck I didn’t organically embrace this without the circumstances of the last few weeks driving the point home

The fainting a few Fridays back, the hospital trip…..all of this may be the result of severe dehydration

Its one of those things that changed and I didn’t notice

Looking back, he used to leave water bottles all over the house, I’d find those opaque caps everywhere

We’d have to lug these heavy 24, 36 packs of water bottles from the store into the house

I realize now, at some point, that kind of slowed down consuming those bottles of water and I really didn’t notice

For me, I know hydration attention sharpened my mental tools, I used that to my advantage when I was under massive work deadlines

So now the absence of hydration is presenting the complete opposite results, which totally makes sense

He has been dehydrated and that makes his cognition, behaviors even more challenging, takes them up a notch or 2 as they say

Yesterday we went to the doc for a follow up after the hospital visit

His blood pressure was way down, which the NP said was likely reflecting dehydration

We discussed the 2 weeks or so prior and she nodded her head, said dehydration is probably a leading cause of it all

So another thing I need to stay on top of, work with him to do, oy vey

Last night he was on the edge of being out of control, his environmental dependency behavior going into over drive

We had talked about meeting up with friends for a DJ party in Marin but he moved into this behavior mid afternoon

Its hard enough managing him at home…..but in a loud, crowded room of other people who have no clue what he is going through, ain’t no way

I am hoping keeping an eye on hydration will bring his behavior back to a manageable normal

Personally, I think I am going through a burn out phase because last night I just focused on my puzzle and let him rummage around the house hoping his meds would kick in

I was really feeling the burn out, feeling like I am in mile 200 of a 500 mile marathon….and I am not a runner!

What I should have done is encouraged him to drink up, water….with hydration tabs; but I was beyond myself, wanting to hide and not engage

So now, at his breakfast placemat, he has all kinds of fluids…..OJ with Miralax, full water bottle, water bottle with hydration tab dissolved

I don’t love that he drinks water from plastic bottles…..but unlike me, he for some reason isn’t into drinking filtered water from the fridge, he wants it in bottles

Ok, we will roll with that if he will keep the fluids rolling in I guess

Hydration, its a thing, a really big thing……lesson relearned over and over and now again……

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