Trouble at the OK Corral

Dizzying pattern to this ER waiting room carpet. My eyes keep closing. Cowboy hat-covered head nodding. Brain waves a little choppy today. So how do I find the words to tell this weird tale? I won't. I can't. So, the crib notes version. My Weird Life for Dummies. How far back do I start?

Christmas. Dial 911 this Xmas and save an ungrateful overdose victim! I did. It sucked, but I had no choice. We've spoken since. She never fails to remind me of the $2000 hospital bill I cost her. A few weeks pass. Mutual friends suggest I stop taking her calls. We're not romantically involved, but she's so pitiful on my voicemail I can't ignore her any longer. We talk, and I keep her at arms length.

Meanwhile, one night I commit the gross social faux pas of inviting along my bipolar roommate and his daughter-in-law to a friend's home for an alleged scrabble tournament. Turns out it isn't a tournament at all, but a small intimate gathering. I try and back out of the house but it's too late. The dice are thrown. My loco amigo has no governor valve on his mouth. Soon, both his poles are spinning wildly out of control. The daughter chafes with the women thanks to rumors around town of some incestual relationship between the two. The whole room is on edge, and I can feel my social standing slipping on the icy road of guilt by association.

The next day I take hits from both sides. My buddy chides me for trying to keep him in check. Another friend, from the scrambled Scrabble night, requests that I never include Mr. Bipolar in my visits to her. Fair enough. But I feel like an asshole nonetheless.

Jump to Monday evening. For reasons unfathomable to me now, I break the no fly zone between Ms. Christmas Overdose and me and invite her over for beers & sausages by the fire pit. She and I and Mr. Bipolar have a gay ole time and drink a whole bucha beer. Famous for demanding to be allowed to drive drunk, she has prompted me to go behind her back and hide her keys.

After a day of target shooting, Mr. B's handgun has yet to be filed away in his closet. Ms. OD becomes irate over the "theft" of her keys. A good half hour of arguing climaxes when, to my disbelieving eyes, OD grabs a handful of ammo and the gun and runs off into the night. I give chase and find her, eyes wild with some feral drunken fear, gun wavering in her right hand where she stands beneath a streetlight. "Give me my goddamn keys!" she shouts. I surrender her keys and gently retrieve the gun.

Alas, the nightmare is far but over. Now that we want her to leave, she stays, apparantly after taking a short test drive and realizing how drunk she is. After a brief period of remorse for the gun incident, she shifts into super obnoxious, high gear. The insanity goes on and on.

Yesterday, in the wake of it all, I spent the entire day in bed with a cluster migraine that ran in and out my head like a hundred freight trains on a busy track. Stress triggers migraines, and this was perhaps the worse migraine I ever experienced in terms of its length and recurrence.

At roughly 4 a.m. this morning, I awoke gasping for air and running my fingers along the arteries in my neck in horror. They were swollen rigid. Above and beside them, my lymph glands bulged and throbbed. My whole head felt ready to explode. A voice began repeating "There's too much blood going to your brain!" So I massaged the arteries for lack of any better idea. I suddenly realized all the pain in my head was on the right side, and the left was entirely numb. My right ear ached terribly. I threw at it every medicine I had, and finally around dawn I slept.

This morning my eyes yet stung and I was wobbly on my feet. I couldn't maintain a train of thought for 5 seconds, and I kept falling asleep sitting up. After nearly fainting while changing a tire on my car, I climbed in it and wove like a drunkard to the local hospital.

I'm doing the nodding thing right now. In and out of conciousness, on a gurney now, awaiting a CT scan of my brain. Their guess diagnosis thus far: a mini-stroke. WHAT?! Are they yahoos? I'm only forty years old. It happens, they say. Jesus, help me.

It's CAT scan time. Probin' my skull, lookin for stray cats. Doubt they'll find any. I think I would know. Thank Heavens they won't find any lead in there. Maybe just a few rocks. Consolation? I wrote all this, so my brain can't be that fried. But a stroke? At 40? Even of the "mini" variety with no percetable damage? Scary.

Thanks a lot, OD & Co. With friends like you, well, you know the rest.

And you thought your holidaze were weird. - RSM
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