inter alia…A Whirlwind Evening with Obscura

Hello again!  It’s been a crazy couple of days in Armitageworld, and I’ve been sidelined for much of it.  As you may have heard, Servetus and I had a bit of an adventure Sunday evening.    It all started out well enough…we met up at a local place that has great chicken wings and (used to have) great onion rings.  A charmingly tattooed bartender who was sucking up nicely, good company, a cold, if kind of pedestrian, seasonal brew from a favorite Wisconsin craft brewery – good times.  We had been chatting about this and that while we waited for the food to show up…I was laughing at the tavern’s method of alerting servers that food was up…namely bellowing said server’s name from the kitchen – classy!  Once our food arrived, I had eaten exactly three chicken wings when out of nowhere I noticed that although I wasn’t moving, the room seemed to be.  Hmm, that’s a bit odd I thought, closing my eyes with the thought that when I opened them, the room would be stationary again.  Not so much.  Then I started to perspire…not delicate lady like perspiring either…

John Porter (Richard Armitage)
Source: http://www.richardarmitagenet.com

No, it was more like a John Porter digging a mass grave in the Zimbabwean sun kind of sweating.  We kind of laughed about it because I had only just said that I like spicy food, but not so spicy that it makes me sweat.  Still dripping sweat, the room still slowly spinning, and me feeling increasingly ill, we eventually decided first that Servetus would drive me home, and then, maybe it would be better to go to the hospital.  I lurched out of the tavern…listing to starboard as I made my way to Servetus’ car.  Once inside, the cool blast from the A/C felt heavenly as we briefly discussed which hospital to go to.  I have a preferred one, but as the motion of the car combined with the motion in my head, it rapidly became clear that I might not make it that far.  We were about to get on the freeway…one peppered with bridges and overpasses…that is, no place to pull over for increasingly green around the gills passenger.  Despite feeling absolutely wretched, I had to laugh when Servetus handed me an empty paper coffee cup that she found, because I couldn’t help but think of that scene from Wayne’s World where Garth (Dana Carvey) holds out a Dixie cup and says to their extremely drunk friend:

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Ultimately, I decided there was no way I was making it to the other hospital, so we went to the closest one and Servetus dropped me at the door of the ER while she went to park the car.  She made it in to join me before I was even able to register since the place was packed (one wonders what the heck goes on on summer Sundays that so many people are in the ER!)  I was holding myself up against the wall, fighting the urge to retch when Servetus asked if I wanted to sit since there was an empty wheelchair, but no available seats.  I declined until a man sitting with his adult daughter said, “You’d better sit, you look like you’re going to faint.”  OK then, I’ll sit.  (This kind of friendly advice from complete strangers is completely ordinary here.)  

It seemed like it took forever for the elderly woman in front of me to finish up with the clerk – it was probably only minutes, but I was working pretty hard not to make a complete spectacle by doing my imitation of Linda Blair in The Exorcist right there in the waiting room.  As it turned out…I only made a partial spectacle of myself since I held out through registration and until I had a basin before I did my Linda Blair impression.  I find that spewing in the waiting area generally fast tracks one to triage. (as does hyperventilating and snorting liquid acetaminophen out one’s nose, but that’s a story for another day.)   

After a quick EKG and a longish trip to a distant bathroom, with Servetus at the helm of the wheelchair,  before my one woman sideshow became even more humiliating, I was finally taken back to a room.  In the interim, Serv managed to get a hold of my husband, tell him the situtation, ask him to bring a change of clothes (since diaphoresis results in soaking wet shorts), and talk to a nurse who brought me a stylish hospital gown to wear for my stay.  I don’t remember a whole lot of what went on in the exam room before my husband got there…probably a whole lot of me laying on the bed in abject relief to just be horizontal since that position seemed to alleviate the spinning and overwhelming nausea.  One thing I do remember is a very nice nurse…from Alabama…who started the IV in my arm.  I mentioned that I had kind of difficult veins, but she found one with no problem and slipped the line in almost painlessly – no matter, the result is always the same with me:

One blown vein for each needle stick. I suppose I should wear sleeves for awhile…

Servetus kindly hung around until my husband arrived and even though I was completely terrible company, I really appreciated her calm and collected presence…my husband, by contrast, is a pacer.

As to the diagnosis:

From my RL Facebook feed…

Nothing terribly serious.  It’s mostly passed already, but I’m totally bummed that I won’t be able to make it to Chicago for Operation Into the Storm this weekend!  I’m really hoping I can make it through the movie at all…what with all the spinning that’s been going on in my head!  We’ve heard a lot recently about the real and deep friendships that have developed between many of us who met via our shared fandom of Richard Armitage.  I can’t agree enough with this sentiment.  It is a true friend who swabs the sweat off your brow while you retch up your dinner into a cotton candy pink plastic bucket!!

Now that I’m on the mend, I’ll fill you in on the latest installment of the Life of a Stage Mom, my personal experience with disaster relief for SpReAd the Love, and plenty of continued blathering about the Classical tradition and this guy:

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