I’m Taking This Medication Side Effect With a Grain of Salt

The call from my urologist’s office came far later than I was expecting, in regards to my long-term chronic urinary tract infection (UTI). The call came in on my home phone, but luckily, someone else was around to answer it. I long ago gave up trying to answer that phone myself.

I’ll never again beat the old-fashioned answering machine before it kicks in. Actually, it’s not that old, as they’re all digital these days. Yup, I’d still been using the cassette one until it eventually died.

I’m slow because I usually have to disengage the powering of my wheelchair, which I always forget until it slowly registers that it’s the reason I’m not moving backward — like an assimilated Borg in the “Star Trek” franchise that has to leave its charging portal. (Yes, I realize this is an extreme exaggeration, but let me have my fun.)

First, my sitting angle has to be adjusted. Then I gingerly go backward from my desk — there are no wing mirrors, remember. Then I gently turn and exit the bedroom, and the phone is right there in the hall.

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Why hadn’t the doctor called my mobi? Well, he had, except I had the ring tone volume turned down.

Getting a handle on sodium levels

The first thing he told me was that I had low sodium levels again. While the rest of us lot in the West are usually fighting high sodium levels, I have the joy of fighting the opposite problem. The trouble is that I don’t actually like salty foods, and I’ve also put myself on a diet.

It transpires that one of the drugs — oxcarbazepine — that I now take to control trigeminal neuralgia, which causes severe facial pain, knocks my sodium levels down. None of my doctors have advised me what I can do about it. I have a feeling they’re not allowed to suggest the obvious, which is to ingest more salt.

It took an exhausting eight hours in the emergency room at my local hospital for one of the on-duty doctors to surmise this. I had to go there because my own general practitioner insisted. Fortunately, my sodium level was above 115, so I didn’t have to be admitted to the hospital.

Back to my urology consultation. As I listened to the complex explanations about my urine and blood levels, I realized I was in a fog. Not a multiple sclerosis (MS) fog, but a fog due to low salt. Usually, I’d ask questions about what a high white blood cell count actually meant. Instead, at that moment, it all seemed too complex to care.

When I put the phone down, a voice told me I needed salt badly. Luckily, there was a bag of cheap, salty peanuts in the house. I started eating a few. As I did, I felt my brain actually engaging. It was like the process one goes through when you wake up. It was very weird.

In the past, I’d have had no choice but to munch through the entire 200-gram bag in one go. Instead, my new control over eating has meant that said bag actually lasted eight days! Somehow, I’ve managed to break the reward cycle that meant I’d become partly insatiable. Every morning, just a few of those overly salted peanuts have banged my salt levels right up and cleared the ol’ brain.

Sorry, this has been a one-note column. S’pose it’s just another variable I have to balance. And balance ain’t exactly the forte of MS. No wonder I keep falling off the high wire and plunging into the safety net below.

Now, it’s another trip to my local hospital for a blood test. Better nibble me nuts first!

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