Last Friday I had a date with a lady that I had previously met at one of those speed dating events. A lovely lady of about my own age and with the delightful bonus of a wicked sense of humor. But if you ignore that first 8 minutes, which was not really a date but more of an interview, last Friday was our first date.
We meet at Z-Tejas downtown Austin around 7:30. We have a drink, dinner and get to know each other better.
The food was delicious as always and the company was delightful. All in all a good evening. So good in fact that I suggest we vacate the table and find a bar downtown where we can continue the date. So we hop in my car and scoot down to The Ginger Man where we both pull up a stool at the bar, order a Bass and get comfortable.
About fifteen minutes after arriving I am feeling a little queasy and venture off to the men’s room. A touch of diarrhea but nothing to worry about, or so I thought.
Upon getting back to the bar I take a sip of the Bass and notice it tastes like shit. Mentioning this to my date she says it is fine. I figure it must be me.
Another fifteen or so passes and the room sees to be growing indistinct. The voice of my date is receding into the distance and I am starting to feel decidedly shitty: nauseous and light headed. Not a good sign. I excuse myself head towards the men’s room and the next thing I remember is laying on the floor and moving to a sitting position while a table with a view of the restroom hall asks me if I am OK. Getting up I answer in the affirmative and enter the men’s room.
At this point my vision has tunneled to that which is directly in front of me. I reach for the first stall: in-use. I reach for the next one in line…
The next thing I remember is being in a dream-like state with voices asking me if I am OK. I pull myself back from unconsciousness, sit up and lean against the nearest vertical object. I notice something curious. A pool of blood on the floor the size of a nice big flapjack.
As I reach around to the back of my head my body decides that it is time to visit another indignity on me and in two huge convulsions I relieve myself of my “Chicken Mushroom and Artichoke Stack” ingested just 90 minutes earlier.
By now employees from the bar have arrived with towels that are spread over the lovely mixture of blood and vomit on the floor and handed to me to sop up the blood from my head’s encounter with the (very hard) concrete floor minutes earlier.
Shortly thereafter a couple of Travis County EMTs arrive, take my blood pressure, shine a light in my eyes and learn The Story So Far. At this point I find the need to find the toilet. More liquids erupt (I will spare you the details). And shortly thereafter I find myself being strapped into a wheeled chair and rolled out to the ambulance which, in short order, takes me off to Brackenridge Hospital Emergency.
This feels more than a little odd as I work at Brackenridge Hospital. In the IS department fixing computers. So being one of the people being wheeled around on the gurney feels strange indeed.
Fortunately it was yet early (10:30ish) and the place was not real busy so I got my blood taken, an MRI and six staples in my head and an IV of what looked like saline solution in fairly quick order and was feeling less like I had just been run through an old fashioned washing machine.
About an hour after arriving, my date arrives having gotten my credit card back back from the bartender (no charge for the beer, which was very nice of them) and hoofed it back to Z-Tejas to get her car. She hung out for another hour while they finished up with me and drove me back to my car.
I will draw the curtain over the rest of the weekend (plus Monday and Tuesday). Suffice it to say that Cephadyn is a lousy headache medicine as is every over-the-counter headache remedy. Even in substantially increased doses. I have now found from experience there is nothing quite like having a headache that lasts a week. Mix that with the recovery symptoms of food poisoning and we have a weekend that I won’t soon forget.
While I am pretty sure that it was my meal that night that caused this episode I am not going to say so definitively. But what I can say is that the staff at The Ginger man were absolutely wonderful as were the EMTs that came and got me and the night crew at Brack ER (they call it “Crash”). They all made a rather painful and difficult experience just that much better. And Major thanks go out to my date that night who was wonderful company before the episode and showed compassion, understanding and patience during the latter part of the evening. I can’t possibly thank her enough.
I will probably take her out to dinner in thanks. But this time I’m picking the restaurant.