Chuck Palahniuk sent me to the hospital. Well, sort of anyways. Raven & I went to a book signing presented by Bound to be Read at the Riverview Theatre. We arrived with paperback copies of Diary & Fight Club, as well as our Fight Club DVD and My Brother's. We settled into our seats and began to listen to his readings from one of his books, when all of a sudden I felt really nauseous. I thought I was going to throw up, but instead everything just started to get real far away.... .... As everything faded back in, I realized that Raven was frantically asking if I was OK. I was pretty sweaty, but otherwise I was only a little disoriented, and assumed I'd just passed out. Could it have been that simple? No, not so much...

Raven has already delivered her account of the events that followed, so I will attempt to be brief.

She ran out to the car to grab my glucose meter, and we checked my blood sugar. It was a little high, so I took a 5 unit dose of insulin. Now all of a sudden there's a bit of a commotion as some first responders arrived to see what the hell was wrong with me. So I'm sitting there, trying to answer their questions, when Chuck stops reading and asks if we need to stop the reading until everything is sorted out.

I meekly smile and try to wave indicating that I'm all right, and the reading continues. I'm walked to the lobby where a paramedic proceeds to ask me to recount what happened for the second of about the twenty or so times I would be asked to recount the story that evening. (And yet, here I am recounting it yet again...)

The paramedic diagnoses this as a seizure. Since there are a few different reasons why one may have a seizure, and none of them are good, he recommends we get to a hospital. I just want to go back inside and listen to the rest of the reading! However, I can see that Raven is concerned, and I don't know what's going on, so I have Raven leave our bag o' books/dvds with someone in the hopes that they'll be signed and resolve to being whisked off to HCMC in an ambulance.

BUT, HCMC isn't accepting any new patients in their ER. So, we change course and head to Abott Northwestern. We arrive, and we get to wait. In the hall. For-ev-er.

Did I say I was going to be brief?

All the while I'm moderately uncomfortable, with an IV tube still in my hand from the ambulance, and I have no idea what may or may not be wrong with me. So we wait.

We finally get moved into a room, and a nurse asks if anyone has drawn any blood. I hate having blood drawn. Not only does it freak me out a little to think of, it also has a tendency to make me pass out. So THEN the doctor shows up, and asks me to go over the story, yet again. So I'm lying there, starting to feel really sick as the nurse is digging around my arm for a vein, (no really, she finally gave up and took it from a vein in my wrist...) and I'm just barely hanging on.

And what is the diagnosis? Vasovagal. Fainting. That's it.

oy.

Don't get me wrong. I don't need anything else to be wrong with me. I just wish we hadn't spent hours (and god knows how many dollars) on an ambulance ride and an ER visit.

At any rate, rest easy faithful blog-reader. There appears to be nothing new wrong with me.

We were able to retrieve our books/DVDs, and they're signed, albeit not personalized. However, I am super-jealous of my Brother's DVD. This is what mine looks like:

which is cool and all, but this is what his looks like:

He gave Brad Pitt a friggin' Captain Morgan 'stache! How is that fair?!?

You'll write another book soon enough Chuck Palahniuk, and when you do, I'll be at that book signing and you'd better have a goddamned good explanation for me!