4.1.07

An Auspicious Start

I had a most auspicious start to the New Year.

(pause)

What does auspcious mean anyway?

...consulting Merriam Webster online..

It means attended by a favorable sign. Well I felt like I had an auspicious start but unless the flu is somehow auspicious I guess it was a suspicious start to the New Year. It definitely wasn't a supercalifragilisticexpialadocius start.

On Tuesday morning I woke up around 4:30 AM with a pain in my stomach. After over a week of sleeping clear through until 10 every morning, I chalked it up to the stress of going back to work. I rolled around in bed for another hour and a half and then it was time. Time to go back to Basel. I showered up, headed off to the airport and arrived feeling definitely a bit strange. Let's leave out the details but after a rough trip to the bathroom I felt a bit better, boarded the plane and fell asleep. The last thing I remember hearing was the pilot saying the landing would be rough as we were landing in the maximum allowable crosswinds. Great!

I woke up about 30 minutes later drenched in sweat and gave myself about 1 minute to make it to the bathroom before I was going to lose my stomach. I was trapped in a middle seat and the person in front of me was reclined into my lap adding a feeling of claustrophobia on top of the overheating I was experiencing.

As luck would have it, just as I started to get up, the plane started its descent and all passengers were asked to stay in their seats and buckle up for the turbulent landing. So I tried to tell myself that I could make it until we landed. That's when I got a strange tingling in my hands and lips.

Slowly I could feel the blood coming out of my hands and feet and lips (did you know your lips could fall asleep? me neither) and I realized that quite imminently I was going to pass out. So I started trying to rationalize what would be the best thing to do. Get up and go to the bathroom despite the turbulence and fasten seat belt sign, tell someone that I was about to pass out and end up with an ambulence waiting for me at the airport, or just pass out and hope I came to again quickly. I made a checklist of pros and cons for each scenario (silly scientific mind) and decided that I would just be quiet and try not to pass out.

But in the end I did. Woah!

I came to just before we touched down and started to be able to see again. Before passing out I could only see stars. So I landed in Basel and went straight to my apartment and spent two days laying around instead of going to work.

Today was back to work and I am feeling much better and tomorrow it's back to Munich to see M., who is on a two day delay with this lovely microbiotic visitor.

A most vicious start, I'd say.

Posted from Basel

2 comments:

Unknown said...

All I can say is OUCH! WEll actually, that sounded a bit like what I experienced from my trip from Zurich to SFO. Instead of passing out, I used the barf bag about 30 seconds after we landed. I tried to hold on too but didn't make it...

I do hope you are feeling better and this weekend treats you much better!

lobstah said...

Ugh, that sounds awful. Glad you are feeling better :)