Next, I need to ride in a helicopter

I always wanted to ride in a limo. Wait, let me clarify, I always wanted to ride in a limo sitting up and not in a casket, which is how I thought i'd eventually end up in one. But on a sales trip for work I had a limo ride too and from the resort they put me up in. Pretty sweet.

Yesterday, I scratched something ELSE off my list. I got to ride in an ambulance. This one, I could have done without.

It all started with a pretty normal saturday. I had a bunch of errands to run and I finished off with a trip to the grocery store. When I got home, I started to watch TV. I started to feel a little nauscious and I ended up with a few ugly trips to the bathroom. I had a couple episodes of the squirts.

When I went to lay down for the night, I had trouble slowing my breathing down. I decided to go sit in the living room for a while and watch TV just in case I had to make any more bathroom runs (hehehe...runs...get it?). The more I sat the worse I felt. My breathing would not slow down. I had numbness down both my arms and they were both tingling. My body, if felt like, would not rest. It was in alarm.

I started to moan which brought my wife out to see me. She asked me over and over again if there was anything she could do to help me. As much as I appreciated her, I couldn't give her any ideas. I started to feel even worse. I knew something was up. So she ended up calling my sister, who is a nurse, to come over in case we needed to head to the hospital.

After my sister was called, I knew I did need to go and my wife ended up calling 911. The first to arrive was the police. A policeman came in and asked me a few questions. I was terrified. I felt like my body was shutting down and I had no idea why. He instructed me to calm down or I was going to pass out. Truth be told, I would have preffered that. At least then I could get some rest.

The paramedics showed up and put all manner of gadget on me to monitor my breathing and heart. They tried repeately to assist me in slowing my breathing down. No luck. Finally they decided to just take me to the E.R. They told me they could take me out but the steps and driveway were very icey. I told them the guy who takes care of that sucks. That guy being me of course. So they helped me walk out to the ambulance.

I got strapped in and off we went to the E.R. Still couldn't breath normally though. I thought it was food poisoning but the medic thought it was a wicked stomach flu going around. She asked me if I feld nauscious and that was good timing because almost as soon as she gave me a plastic bucket I hurled into it very very violently. I thought my lungs were coming out.

After that I started to feel better but then she told me that it probably would return. Which it did, in the E.R. By the time I got to the E.R. I was just exhausted. No sleep, and my body was just a wreck. I couldn't get back to normal breathing and on top of this, I had to answer bullshit questions for a secretary asking me questions. I wanted to scream "You know what, my wife is out there....get my social from HER!".

They ended up putting me on some sort of nausea medication through an IV and finally I was able to close my eyes for a bit. If this was a flu, I might just have to change my policy of never getting a flu shot. I didn't want this ever again.

About 4:30 in the morninig I felt good enough to leave and they gave me a few prescriptions for nausea and the mother of all anti-diahrrea medicines too, Nopoopatall, i think it was called.

So Sunday, a day I had planned to make chicken wings, eat my wife's fabulous meatballs and just pig out while watching my Pittsburgh Steelers win their 6th Super Bowl, I ended up spending most of the day in bed with the chills. With the team they have, maybe I'll be lucky enough to see that again, healthy this time.