EPTScience Bowl. It's the same crowd. We're having a good time. I just finished reading a round, and now we screw around for a while between the rounds. Aaron breaks out a small bag of popcorn, and I ask to have a few.
I take two. As I bite into the second one, there is something strange with the consistency that makes me uneasy. I ask Aaron if there was anything other than popcorn in the bag. He says no. I calm down a little. At the first sign of allergy symptoms, I claim that I just remembered an emergency and must leave immediately.
I walk calmly out the room. A few steps outside, I start running to my bike. I know that I'm going to need to take the epipen; it's at home. As long as I could hold on for a few minutes, I should be fine. This isn't the first time I've had a serious allergic reaction. When I reach my bike I open up my backpack and take a spray of epinephrine. It usually calms stuff down for a while.
I race home on my bike. When I get back, I feel the same symptoms for any allergic reaction. My throat is swelling, but it's nothing major. I take another spray of epinephrine. My stomach is trying to regurgitate but it cannot because of the peculiarities of my digestive system. I take out the epipen from the medicine cabinet and start reading instructions on it.
I feel uncomfortable, but this is normal. After about half an hour of debating whether or not to use the "lethal weapon". I finally roll up my pants, step onto my bathtub and stab myself in the leg. I can barely feel it. As I hold the epipen to my leg, I feel the adrenaline going to work. I don't shake as much as the last time I had used it.
I go back to my computer and watch VODs of Tasteless commentating. I'm feeling better, but my stomach is still acting up.
About a half an hour later I start itching.
Dayv, you idiot, what do you think happens to things that get ingested? They get digested and spread throughout your bloodstream!
This is where things turn for the worse.
I can feel my ears swelling, and the pulse that pounds through them. I start sneezing uncontrollably, my eyes start watering. My entire face itches. My head inflates as the uncontrollable inflammatory response initiates. My eardrums throb, feeling ready to burst. I run downstairs and look at myself in the mirror.
Like some deformed monster, my eyes are swollen to some bizarre orientation. The water from my eyes is coming down my face. All of my skin is breaking out in a rash.
I call my dad. He says he'll come home. He tells me to take Benadryl. He says it sounds serious.
I wait. I sit on the couch and think. I think while I feel my body cease to function normally. My heart is still pounding. I'm sneezing uncontrollably, and more mucous is being produced than the worst of allergies and colds. What I can see out of my swollen eyes is blurred by the water running out of them. Everything itches. My eardrum feels even closer to bursting.
Could this be death? I hoped that it wasn't. It couldn't be. I have so many unfinished goals, unfinished projects, unfulfilled dreams that I could not accept myself to die. But there is a difference between what is reality and what I can accept of myself. I cried silently, "This can't happen! I have to go to Oberlin! I have to work and become a better musician! If my ears blow out, I'll never hear music again..."
"If I don't live past this. I'll never see Lisa again. It's been so long since we've seen each other! There are so many things we've planned in doing in our future that will never come true. Never even with a chance to say goodbye..."
To be honest, I wasn't convinced that I was going to die. I just wasn't convinced that I was going to live.
To calm myself down, I start walking laps around the inside of my house. I look in the mirror again. Everything looks the same as before, just worse. My dad finally arrives. He takes one look at me, and says we need to go to the hospital.
In the car, he calls Walgreens and tells them to prepare some sort of emergency prescription. After he gets off the phone, I ask him if my condition is life threatening. He says it is, but that I will be fine. What else can you say?
After picking up medicine at Walgreens, we head to the hospital. My dad tells me that the two things I need to alert him about are if I feel light-headed or if I have trouble breathing. Right now, my heart is pounding away, I can breathe normally, and I feel rather aware. As we get close to the hospital, I ask if I should call Lisa. He says that I might as well.
I get her voice mail. Go figure. "Hi Lisa, it's Dayv, I'm not doing too well. I'm having a really severe allergic reaction and I'm not sure what's going to happen. I really love you. I don't know when I'll be able to talk to you again."
Shortly after I get off the phone, my dad tells me to recline. As I begin to lay down, I feel a feeling in my gut. I vomit about 4 times, all over myself. I'm too out of it to really notice or care. After vomiting, I know that the agent of suffering has stopped being digested. We get to the entrance of the emergency room. My dad wheels me into the hospital, soaked in stomach acid.
When I get in there, they tell me to undress. Surprisingly, I'm able to do so on my own power. They give me a hospital gown and tell me to put it on. I lay down on the bed they provide me. They say a lot of words I can't really comprehend. They do a lot of weird stuff involving putting medicine into me. I remember them taking my blood pressure often. The Benadryl they inject into me via IV is making me more and more tired, and I finally succumb to sleep.
***
How lucky am I? So many things could have easily gone different during that sequence of events, and I would be a dead man. I ended up having 4 doses of epinephrine in as many hours, if I was in worse shape I could have had a heart attack. If I didn't have medicine on me initially, I wouldn't have had so much time to get to the hospital.
How much of my life would I have missed out on?
The experience really changed my outlook on life, to say the least.
-Dayv
P.S. There is nobody to blame for this incident. It was purely a freak accident, based only on the unfortunate circumstance in which it took place.
