Oh, What a Night (& Day)!

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?  PLENTY has happened, that’s for sure, but I just haven’t come back to the site for a bit.

Big Brother’s final few weeks have been mostly anti-climactic and a bit disappointing, which led to me abandoning my fairly good record of posting about the episodes.  I’ll do a final post about it separately though, in a few moments.

But man, do I have a story for this site!  Guess who got to go to the Emergency Room on Wednesday night?  ME!  It all started when we finally finally decided to have dinner with our very nice neighbors, who live in the other unit of the Los Feliz duplex we live in.   When planning the meal to make, we knew we were going to work with slightly healthier restrictions, including going with grass-fed, free-range meat.  No biggie, and that’s probably a better thing to do anyway.  So Larry found a tri-tip from Whole Foods that fit the bill, and then our neighbor agreed to bring her mac & cheese and a green veggie, which ended up being a garlicy brussels sprouts dish.

So the night began, and while both Larry & I were a bit nervous as while we really like our neighbors, the random and brief interactions you have with them are not the same as an extended, very small group setting.  Of course we drank a few to calm the nerves.  That certainly helped as it was so much fun just chatting with them when they came over.  They really are great.  We finished cooking and preparing the tri-tip on the grill and everyone sat down to what looked like a great dinner.  Then our neighbors tried to kill me.

Dramatic, much?  Alright, so they didn’t intentionally try to kill me, as I’m awesome, so why would you do that?  Here’s what happened:  I ate a few bites of both the brussels sprouts dish and the mac & cheese as I was very curious how they tasted and to see if I was going to enjoy brussels sprouts more than the time Larry made it.  I really wasn’t a fan back then and I’ve heard plenty of good things about their deliciousness.  And you know what?  That night’s dish WAS good!  But I started feeling a funny feeling in my mouth.  A bad funny feeling.  Larry worriedly asked our neighbor:  “um….are there any nuts in these dishes?”  OH FUCK.

Why, yes, there were nuts in those dishes.  In the brussel sprouts dish, yummy chopped walnuts.  In the mac & cheese, almond milk.  The double jackpot!

Thoughts After the Fact:  Seriously, I can NOT believe I was so not my typical self about food.  I ALWAYS annoyingly check with whomever if there are nuts in a dish.  I have to.  Allergic reactions are not pleasant but I usually recognize the symptoms immediately and stop eating whatever and drink a ton of water to flush my system.  That usually works.  This time?  Not so much.

Back to Wednesday night, I immediately realize that I’d been ignoring the symptoms a bit but now I am feeling them quite momentously.  I head to the bathroom to try to drink water.  The symptoms aren’t going away, and in fact, they’re getting worse.  I get the whole puffy face and neck, red skin, itchiness…..which I was actually thinking I could perhaps ride the wave out of, but then I started getting hives, and that’s when I was like, I needs to go to the hospital.

So off to the ER I went!  And oh, for good measure, on the drive over in Larry’s car, I decide to throw up all over myself.  So I looked a MESS when I got wheeled into the ER.  Of course, it’s apparently super busy, so I get to wait around for a while in the main waiting area covered in puke.  Then when getting evaluated by the first nurse, I puke again, luckily though not on myself but instead into a handy puke bag.  Yay me.  After another period of waiting, I got set up on a bed with an IV of Benadryl, prescribed to me by definitely the hottest doctor in the place.  YOWZA.  So it wasn’t all bad.

After all was said and done, with Larry by my side, my reaction finally subsided.  SuperBenadryl is amazing.

Lesson Learned/Reinforced:  Ask what’s in the fucking food.  Still kicking myself over that.

As for the (& Day) part of the headline, I ended up working from home as I was zonked from the Benadryl fix from the night before.  I had a doctor’s appointment already made due to the De Quervain’s problem I have in my left hand, so that was also a super fun time.  I am at a new doctor since going back to Santa Monica for doctor stuff really isn’t practical.  The new doc is really great so far and decided to inject a cortisone shot into my hand.  THAT IS A MOTHERFUCKING PAINFUL SHOT.   There was some anesthetic in the shot (which he gave me two of) to reduce the pain, but that wore off right before going to sleep and holy fuck, that was some pain.  I’m hopeful though, as he has some things for me to do to help solve this problem which is what I’ve been needing to do for a while now.  And this morning, the pain is significantly less than what I went to sleep with.

Long LONG story short:  I’m a broken mess.