* * * * *
                                        
                            nervous dizzy sleepless
                                        
Nervous. Dizzy. Sleepless.

Those were the words I read on the bottle of generic Tussin cough syrup [1].
Under a heading of “Stop taking and consult a doctor if …”

Sleepless … check. I had taken a doze of cough syrup the night before, having
a cough. Followed the recommended dosage, then attempted to go to sleep.
Usually one is warned not to operate heavy machinery (such as a screw driver
or ball-point pen) since the typical side affect is sleepiness. But try as I
might, I could not get to sleep last night. My mind was racing, faster than a
five year old on a sugar rush, but even less of an attention span. “Oooh!
Shin—oooh! Shin—Whoah! Shi—Wow!” I could keep my eyes closed, but I wasn't
sleeping.

Nervous … well, not emotionally, but physically? My legs had this nervous
energy and they wouldn't stop moving. Now, it wasn't like they were
uncontrollable twitchings and yes, I could keep them from moving, but they
felt as if they wanted to scale Mount Everrest. And then K2 as a light
dessert. They had this excess energy that I had to burn off somehow, seeing
how Mounts Everrest and K2 were half a world away.

Dizziness … not sure. I didn't get out of bed (despite the protesting
thrashings of my legs) since I didn't feel like getting out of bed so it's
hard to say if I would have been dizzy or not. Although I might have been
dizzy giving the tossing and turning I was doing for oh, five or six hours
easy.

So I'm looking at the bottle this morning, going “check, not sure, check” and
realizing that I may want to avoid the cough syrup in the future. But in
doing some research for this entry, I come across this bit:

> Limit caffeine (for example, tea, coffee, cola) and chocolate intake. Use
> with this medicine may cause nervousness, shakiness, rapid heartbeats, and
> anxiety
> 

Well, that explains it.

Sucks that I'll have to give up on caffeine … um … wait a second … 

Sucks that I'll have to live with this cough … 

[1] http://www.umm.edu/altmed/ConsDrugs/GuaifenesinandDextromethorphancd.html

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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