These days, I am a fan of heat (in moderation of course). I love my bubble baths, I have more herbal teas than I do shoes (this is a huge deal), I always keep soup on hand, and I love sitting out in the hot sun soaking up its heat while playing with my dog.
If you knew me way back in junior high and/or high school, this would be astonishing.
Back then, for whatever reason, my body couldn't handle heat of any kind.
I would always get sicker after a hot bath - I rarely had them. If I ate any kind of a meal that was hot, I had to wash it down with ice cold water almost immediately after every bite. I couldn't handle tea or coffee or hot chocolate or anything unless I had an ice cold beverage to chase it with.
Summers I spent basically as a shut in. Every time I would go outside and it was warm out, I would be back inside within 30 seconds vomiting. I couldn't eat or drink anything hot because it would do the same thing. It would cause these unbearable fits of nausea and stomach cramping until it was all out of my system.
This made monthly clear fluid stretches really complicated.
Due to a 'touchy' pancreas and intestines that refused to do their duty, I had to go on a clear fluid diet every month (or so) for about four-five days at a time.
Clear fluids meant water, broth, popsicles, jello, tea with no sweetener, white grape juice, and some types of Gatorade.
Now, my very first pancreatic attack, I dove in on the jello. 7 days of jello. After that day, it took me 6 years to walk by the jello section at a grocery store without gagging and sometimes full out vomiting just from the thought of it.
Then, popsicles started causing issues. That weird mixture of different flavors and hunger all sitting at the back of the throat. Yeah... That gets too disgusting to handle after a while. I absolutely hated broth - and add that to being unable to eat/drink anything hot, broth was out (I still, to this day, can't handle beef broth. Even beef broth based soups and stews are hard for me to choke down sometimes). And tea, well tea posed another hot beverage problem.
So, for YEARS, all I had for four days every month was water. I would go straight to water, then maybe on the last day, I would have a popsicle or some grape juice. Late enough that I could wash down the taste with ACTUAL solid food fairly quickly.
Now, clear fluid diets are much more bearable. My list of choices has gone to broth, some soups if I strain out any whole vegetables/meat, deliciously flavored tea, water, white grape juice (which I still don't reeeeally like), and I can handle the odd popsicle or portion of jello.
I would like to say thank you to Teavana and David's Tea for offering me much more enjoyable choices for my cyclical need to be on a fluid diet.
And thank goodness I can eat meals and drink beverages that are hot.
This morning I started out with a nice cup of hot chocolate with peppermint syrup WHILE I was enjoying a bubble bath. Talk about a reversal in my body's way of handling heat!