I’m still not exactly sure what happened this morning, but I do know that it was one of the worst times of my life and, at the time, seemed almost to be the end of it.

I awoke this morning with my right calf devastated by a charlie horse cramp that I had failed to awaken to in sufficient time to stem the damage.  Normally, you want to lift your leg up in the air above your head and wiggle your toes at the onset of such a cramp.  And normally I do.  But I had mysteriously slept through the cramp and woke to the pain in its aftermath, damage done.  Smarting badly, I hobbled into the kitchen, grabbed the bottle of painkillers, snatched one, and downed it.  But it was the wrong medicine.   Oh it was a bottle of painkillers alright, but it was a narcotic that I had never taken before.  And apparently, one I shall never take again since I seem to have severe side effects from it: Vicodin.  

Waiting for the med to kick in, with my calf still pulsing painfully, I hobbled on into the bathroom to soak in the tub.  The first 15 or 20 minutes soaking was all the comfort I was going have until about 2 in the afternoon. 

The ‘reaction’ started with a general light tingling all around and a little light-headedness.  I got out of the tub then, thinking not too much of it, and got dressed.  But shortly thereafter, while sitting at the computer, I began to perspire.  First, a little, and then more, until I was flush with heat and had to open the door and walk outside in a tee shirt into a freezing 18 F. just to feel a moment of relief.  And while standing out there in that cold, knowing that I should be shivering, but feeling instead like it was summer outside, I knew I was in trouble.

After about 5 minutes outside, I returned to the house and began again to sweat profusely.  And the lightheadness was intensifying, joined by a sense of restlessness, and slower breathing.  Fuck.  I was losing it.  I had to get out—it was just too hot to stay in the house.  So I hopped into my truck and started driving, having decided to drive down to the university and ‘walk it off’.  Right. 

A little over a week ago, I was running for hours under a noonday tropical sun.  Today, I found myself exhausted after climbing one flight of stairs at the university—and my muscles were starting to go limp.  Fuck.  I walked a little, then sat down—with no relief.  I went into a restroom and tried to induce vomiting.  But was unable to.  By that time, I was experiencing severe dehydration and was sipping at water fountains every five minutes till the point that I was bloated with water sloshing around in my belly.  What to do?   What to do?...

Beyond the unrelenting misery of these side effects, I thought and felt: I might die.  I imagined that it was possible that death was watching and saw me creeping closer to its portal, minute upon minute. 

I know what some of you are going to say:  Why didn’t I call 911?  Why not get help?  I don’t know how to respond to that except to say that the notion didn’t occur to me—perhaps because of my pronounced disorientation, perhaps because I still hoped that I could ‘walk it off’.  But I didn't, couldn’t walk it off. 

I was growing dizzier and flirting with sleepiness.  But I didn’t want to just lie down there at the university and sleep.  So I went back to my truck, having decided then that I'd be better off at home.  Once underway on the road, it felt like I was driving too slow, like it was taking forever to get home, even though I was maintaining the speed limit.  My sweating had relented, so I was hoping that returning to a heated house wouldn’t be discomforting.  The trip home seemed automized, like I had the truck on autodrive.  Smart truck that truck: conveying a dizzy, slow-breathing, nauseous dude homeward...

At home, I still felt overly hot, but not so severely as before.  However, I really started to feel strange otherwise.  I needed to lay down, to rest…to rest…  I wanted to sleep…but feared lapsing into a coma.  The charlie horse cramp earlier had seized me in my sleep.  I didn’t want death to surprise me thusly too.  I laid down, nonetheless, and looked at the clock: I had taken the pill 2 and a half hours earlier, it’s effects were rated for 4 hours—I calculated that I’d only need to stay awake another hour and a half for the effects to wear off. 

I closed my eyes and images of beautiful women, one after another, floated through my mind.  But they were all dead.  Perhaps these were the women of the cemetery I would often run around in.  And I thought: they are waiting for me to join them.  Had I taken two of those Vicodin (the allowable dosage) instead of just the one, they may not have been waiting for long.  But I was still waiting on ticks of the clock. 

And after a long, long hour of sleepiness checked by mental determination not to fall asleep, I started belching profusely.  And after 10 minutes of that, I started laughing: I was…feeling…well, better.  Suddenly.  And ten minutes after that, I was back on my feet, dressed, and ready to take on the day.