Acquire temperance

An excerpt from my new book on chronic kidney disease:

Prince Hamlet advised the players in Shakespeare’s play to, “acquire and beget a certain temperance that would give their (drama)… smoothness”, but with my CKD, my body no longer regulates temperature correctly at all times.

My wife shouted in alarm on coming home to find me bundled in a scarf and fleece when the mercury read around 77 degrees Fahrenheit. “It’s not hot!”, she said, “take off that beanie!”. But I was feeling a chill, and the pulsating air from the swamp cooler in our home was making me cold. She was trying to keep me from getting off kilter and slipping into worse health.

Was it cold? No, but I felt a chill nonetheless.

Lately, we have been experiencing record highs in the one hundred degree range, but most of the time the house is running about eighty, with cooling, and I am perfectly content.

I can take a fairly long walk in the heat and not be bothered, but again, am still highly susceptible to heat in the sense that I can’t spend long periods under the sun, because my body is extremely prone to dehydration.

I drink about one hundred and fifty ounces of water, juice and tea per day, but the juice is mostly sugarless; the tea consists of one bag, sixty-four ounces of water and two packets of Stevia; and the water is just filtered tap.

If you are in Stage 3 CKD, these types of symptoms could be at issue.

One day, I was warm so I wore shorts and a T-Shirt and while I was working, I got freezing cold. So then, I put on sweats and a beanie and then I got hot and I put on the shorts again and then in the evening after dinner, I got cold again. How I am wearing warm lounge pants with tube socks, a fleece and a beanie, it’s eighty-two degrees and I’m comfy, is beyond me; my temperature is all over the place.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to

you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as

many of our players do, I had as lief the town crier

spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with

your hand thus, but use all gently, for in the very

torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of

passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that

may give it smoothness.

— Hamlet Act 3, Scene 2