What a fabulous high!

What a trip! I probably burned through every drop of adrenaline and several other hormones in my system last night but it is worth it!

All the media houses working together, those of us who are experienced in TV as well as radio cushioned the 'radio onlies' until they found their balance and treated the all seeing eye with the disdainful familiarity we all give our microphones.

The dancers danced, the singers sang and danced and the entertainment ranged from classical jazz and opera to hip hop, reggae and calypso. And the pledges rolled in. The energy was electric as the team tossed back and forth between the two studios with flair and grace and brought the same level of enthusiastic gratitude to the live presentation of twenty dollars from a five year old girl as we did to the fifty thousand dollar cheque presented immediately before. I thought the little girl had an edge in flair herself!

There was one moment, waiting for my cue to move from standby to go, that I faltered. We were watching a montage of reactions and stories from people who were actually there; helping to restrain a mother and father from flinging themselves into the still unsettled cave-in in search of their daughter and grandchildren, a rookie reporter on his first big story with tears on his cheeks as he described his feelings as the cries from beneath the rubble grew fainter and stopped altogether. The finger pointed, the camera went live, I spoke. From my heart and let the tears in my eyes be heard.

There were several presenters and we got to take breaks; even so in Studio B, with the phone volunteers, we were on perpetual stand by with live drop ins every few minutes as people brought their money by in person. Today my cheeks ache from the smiles, my ribs feel bruised from the hugs of relief and joy after we went dark and my voice is croaking from a throat that feels raw. I have talked more in the last two days than I usually would in an average week. Perhaps two.

The hollow feeling I have inside is directly attributable to the fact that I have had two meals since Thursday. The rest has been a pot of yoghurt or a handful of nuts grabbed on the run, although I did manage to acquire two sandwiches, which might have been tuna, and insulted my system with the evil delights of pure sugar in carbonated water all red, no doubt from red dye number 98, and seductively tasty. The time has come to remedy that and head off the incipient headaches before it sets its claws well and truly into my noise battered skull.

Oh, but it was a fine rollercoaster of a trip!