Well… it’s Day 2 of not taking the niacin and I haven’t had a “flushing” episode since Friday.Â? At the burial service yesterday, one of my church ladies exclaimed, “Jen!Â? You look normal!”Â? Uh yeah… if it hadn’t been so uncomfortable, there could have been some humor in the flushing episodes, especially watching peoples’ eyes widen and their jaws drop as they watched it spread across my face and arms and legs and being like “What?”

I see my doc on Monday and I think we’ve established that it was the niacin and NOT the Metformin (as her nurse was claiming).Â? I don’t think she’ll put me back on it, or if she does, it will be on a significantly lower dose.

I was sitting and talking to the secretary of the Lutheran church in town today when my arm started itching.Â? I rolled up my sleeve and saw that it was all red and flushed.Â? The secretary was also looking at me with big eyes.Â? “I’m turning red, aren’t I?” I asked.Â? She nodded.Â? I explained that it was just a niacin reaction and would go away within an hour or so.

This is making me want to wait on taking it until AFTER my the funeral tomorrow and AFTER the LSAT on Monday as I’d prefer not to have a ton of people asking what’s wrong with me tomorrow and not to have to deal with the flushing while I’m trying to make logical deductions and read obscure passages.

In addition, the spot on my left arm where they have been drawing blood is now black and blue.Â? I don’t usually bruise that badly from bloodwork but I guess the vein has been pierced enough.Â? I’ve also got a lovely collection of needle trails in that spot.Â? If you didn’t know me well, I’m sure you’d think I was trainspotting.

My doc is having me take 500 mg of niacin (25 times the RDA) to try and lower the cholesterol and tryglicerides.Â? OK… not a problem — picked up some OTC stuff at the pharmacy with my Metformin and took it yesterday without a problem.

I had to go in for early bloodwork today and took my daily pills (we’re up to 6 now) with some blueberry yogurt and a South Beach Diet bar I had left over from Synod Assembly.Â? I then went and got a water bottle and drained it while at breakfast with Jon and his pastor homies.

On the way home, I started feeling hot and like I had pins and needles in my face.Â? It eventually spread over my entire body until I was red from head to toe and feeling like someone had put a space heater inside of me.Â? I was really itchy but couldn’t scratch any of the itches because it felt like my skin was sunburned.Â? Had my grandma not told me about feeling tingles when she took it, I would have thought that I was having a serious allergic reaction to something.

I got home, changed into a t-shirt and shorts and called the clinic.Â? I got their answering service so I called the pharmacy and talked to the pharmacist.Â? He told me that this was completely normal and that it would go away in a while.Â? I asked if there was anything I could do (since I was pretty uncomfortable).Â? He told me to drink some more fluids to see if it would cause the blood vessels in my skin to undilate.Â? (The niacin caused the blood vessels to dilate.)Â? At this point, I was simultaneously feeling chilled so I cowered under a quilt on the couch until I could fall asleep.

The redness and tingling are gone (I was “normal” when I woke up an hour later) and I was told that if I take my niacin with plenty of liquid (i.e. actually DRINK something instead of taking my pills with my morning yogurt), it would probably not happen again.Â? Let’s just say that it had better not happen again or my doc is going to get a really pissy call from me on the subject.