I came to, confused & sight-fractured, on my bathroom floor very early this morning. I got up immediately, using a two-year-old's wobbly, unpracticed actions. My jammie pants were askew to the point of Failblog-worthiness, reminding me, as my vision resolved back to normal, what the hell I was doing there. Unfortunately, Margaritas had nothing to do with it.
See, my GI tract must have been alerted to #RoastFriday and/or April Fool's Day. At some time after going to sleep, I had one of those awful cramps we've all had. It was low down but not, I didn't sense, imminent (if you catch my drift - jeez, how to word these TMI things). I had been deeply asleep, so I tried simply flipping over onto my left side. The cramp disappeared, all better.
But just after I drifted back off, it reappeared. With a vengeance. Still didn't feel imminent. Got up and headed to the bathroom anyway.
There, I marveled at the pain level of this cramp. Astonishing. Gravity had begun doing its thing - just begun, no relief yet - and ... motherfucker, this pain. I popped a sweat all over. Pain worsened. Sat there, sat back, the popped sweat turning into rivulets that started needing a hand towel to manage. The backs of my arms and my forehead got clammy and cold.
At one point, many minutes into this extraordinarily unlovely experience, the cramp seized up as though it had been just kidding around so far. It seized up as if the ghost of a slavering wolf was reaching in there to twist off my lower intestine for use as a jump rope.
Image Credit: Disney
At least that's the imagery that presented itself to me in the wee hours of the morning.
In ridiculous, insane pain, my skin now drenched & numbing, and the moment becoming surreal in every way, I said (whether aloud or in my head I'll never know):
"Nooooo -"
...then, nothing. Blackness. I did not fade out in a faint, I did not become gradually less aware; I have no memory or 'experience' of anything after the fifth 'o' of that 'No'. I just plain crumpled. In fact I can only tell you that much with any certainty due to the evidence that is my coming-to.
I am not usually one to recount tales from the restroom, but I had a strange urge to tell about this; it's unusual, for one thing, kinda scary, maybe interesting. And, thanks especially to my state upon coming-to, potentially rather comical. My first thoughts were, there are certain YouTube/FailBlog peeps who'd be ALL over this, heh. But my next thoughts were: Heck, dangerous. Super chancy. My head had been so close to the radiator when I came-to that I wondered whether my vision was so fucked up because I'd hit my head on it. (Probably not; no head bump or pain has presented itself). But I think I just also don't want to be alone with this blackout anymore.
The care I received was that of my own body doing what it could to right itself. The knowledge of what had just happened belonged to me only. I live alone, and I treasure my privacy, my autonomy, but if this episode had resulted in need for life-saving medical attention, such as if my head really had conked that radiator, a vertebra had fractured, or an artery had ruptured, I'd have been fucked three entirely different ways from Sunday.
"Life's better with company. Everybody needs a co-pilot." - from the movie Up In The Air
For all that awful, literally gut-wrenching pain, I am one very, very lucky person. But I'll feel a lot luckier if I find a co-pilot.
Image credit: Lucasfilm
Thank you many times over for reading this. I'm grateful not to be alone with the knowledge of it, anymore.
P.S. You may or may not be wanting it confirmed: I am indeed all better now.
P.P.S. When searching for the above photo, I stumbled across this one:
Image credit: Lucasfilm
Love that. :-D
