November 10, 2010 - Breakfast

Yesterday evening I rode my bike merrily along until the moment when my entire body swelled up and broke out in hives. This, I thought as my tongue became a lump of steak too big for my mouth, feels wrong. Went home, dropped off the bike, went up four flights, and examined myself in the mirror. I did not look correct. Wife called just then, a few blocks away. "Ate badaba," I said. "By kwide. I'm skahd." Ate banana, bike ride, I'm scared. She told me to take Benadryl and ran home, finding me soaking wet, eyes swollen half-shut, tongue lolling. Didn't realize I'd been on a bike ride, thus the sweat, and figured that I'd had a heart attack.

"Emergency room," I said.

"Yeah," she said.

Car service: A van, heavily cologned, Virgin Mary figurine, the velour seats setting off alarms in my body. [Wifebear], now [Wondernurse], there consistently. Moments like this I feel that I dodged a million bullets to find this person. Going to the emergency room together is in our wedding vows. I will always meet you there, it says. So we went over at 9:30. They seated me in a reclining chair with some other people--a man named Sergei with an infected leg, a woman with Pleurisy, a dog-bite victim, and a woman with a ganky arm who needed pain meds, and who began to scream that she knew people in gang activity and that they were going to come over here and blow some cracker heads off if she didn't get her pills. She was a poor advocate for her own care. The woman with pleurisy had been there from very early and had spent all day at the free clinic, but when it closed they sent her over to the emergency room. By 1AM I was treated and doing much better, tongue almost normal, and now I have two giant epi-pens, one of which is to be upon my person at all time, so that I can shoot myself with a needle if it happens again. I am deciding not to dismiss it or shrug it off but rather the get invested, going to the allergist, and taking it seriously.