What happens after a day in the sun?

What happens after a day in the sun?

Normally after an open ended question like that, you are likely to get the typical response that someone is severely sunburned. I am pleased to announced that neither Lance or I are severely sunburned. I had a couple of pink spots but nothing too bad. Lance did not appear to have anything on him. That is a good sign as far as I am concerned. With us being outside in the sun for a good chunk of the day in the high noon heat and then the remainder of the day off and on this is a good thing. I do not know what the schedule was for the Wolves as I was not with them, but we were inside and outside throughout the evening with the Bears. Fortunately, most of the outdoor things were with some shade and that helped significantly.

Of course getting little boys to drink water when they are not thirsty is interesting. “I just drank” is often the response. Unfortunately, signs of dehydration are not so easy to explain to a group of active, sweaty 8-9 year old boys. They just do not understand it. They feel fine. They are used to playing outside in this. So we have to insist that they drink when they are not thirsty. Still I am certain that most of these boys are not getting enough water throughout the day. There is no real good way to measure this with as many boys as we have and those little cups.

I am pretty certain that in spite of my best efforts that I did not get enough water today. My bladder was screaming at me by the end of the day. It was full but I could not empty it. Pretty good sign that it had not gotten enough water. My bladder does funky things since I had my surgery, it reacts differently. I was fine once I got it to empty, but it was pretty painful until I was able to relax enough to get it to empty tonight. The sad thing is that I did drink a lot of water today. It still was not enough. That is why I am confident in saying that the boys did not get enough. Of course, I have a significantly higher need for water with my medications. Then again, my partner Den Walker and co-Den Leader said she was suffering from the same problems with not enough water intake. It happens.

It was not just my bladder when I got home, however. Once I sat down and had a chance to breathe. I realized how bad it really was. My shoes came off. My body was holding onto the water trying to keep it. It knew it needed it. It was trying to keep it. That is what my body does when it starts to dehydrate, it starts to retain fluid in places. I had not really noticed it throughout the day because I was so busy. It was not that bad. Once I took my shoes off, however, I did notice that puffiness.

Here is the worst…

This was me trying to get my wedding rings of. This was after about 15 minutes. I had managed to get the diamond off. This was the last one. I could not get it to budge. It took a lot of patience and a lot of soap with lotion in it. Yes, my fingers were a tad swollen after the first day at camp. I was not a happy camper anymore when I could not get them off. Fortunately, I did finally get them off and there were no medical emergencies at home.

I had a 1 liter bottle of water attached to my bucket and a 3 liter Camelbak strapped to my back and I still did not have enough water. The fact is, you do not always know when you are getting dehydrated. You cannot always feel it coming on. When you are busy and working and basically having a good time, you do not always pay attention to the signs. It easily happens to the best of us no matter how cautious or prepared we are.

Lance did not handle the day as well as I had hoped. Even in spite of the watering stations throughout the camp. There were plenty of them. I did not think to strap a Camelbak on him. I did give him an extra 1/2 liter water bottle inside his bucket and he had his camp issued cup attached to his bucket to use at all of the watering stations. He even had two Gatorade bottles in his lunch. By the end of the day, he was just wiped out. He was completely done. He did not enjoy his first day of camp because of it. That really saddened me.