Storytellersunplugged

Many years ago, I had a piano teacher who owned a pet bobcat named Lester. Normally, Lester sat quietly on his haunches during my practices, paying little attention to anything other than his feeding time. One Saturday, however, I arrived for practice and discovered Lester running around the house like his tail was on fire. When I asked Ms. De’Rebolo (my teacher) what had gotten into Lester, she said simply, “The moon.” She gave much credence to the effects of the new and full moon on humans and animals, and over the years, I’ve come to respect her outlook. More than once I’ve noticed that when things are most chaotic in my life, especially with people or pets, the moon is in fact waxing toward or waning from its full or new phase. This week was no exception. Wednesday was new moon, and here’s what’s happened so far…

This past week’s book tour started in Cincinnati, a few days prior to the new Harry Potter’s release date. I’ll tell ya, trying to sign at bookstores inundated with Potter mania is like a leaking faucet facing Niagra Falls. If that wasn’t bad enough, check out what followed…

The following evening I did a signing at a Borders in Indianapolis. It was a slow night, not many people coming into the bookstore and most of the booksellers were focused on the upcoming Potter event. Fortunately, Barbara Smith arrived, a lovely lady who reviews regularly for many romance mags and ezines. She sat with me for most of the evening, and we chatted about anything that came to mind. Had it not been for her, the evening would have been very boring.

After the signing, I went to my car and found a note stuck under the left windshield wiper. It was from a woman named Kim, and she wrote to tell me that as she was backing out of the Borders parking lot, she ‘accidentally’ hit the right bumper of my Pathfinder with her car. Her phone number was listed after her signature. Groaning, I went to the back of my car to see the damage. A few scratches, no dents. Not worth the insurance hassle.

I got back in my car and headed back to the hotel. Once there, I took care of some business in the bathroom, then flushed the toilet and turned on the shower. Within seconds, I heard a gurgling sound behind me. I looked back in time to see water casca
ding over the toilet seat and onto the floor…gallons of it. I quickly lifted the tank lid and jiggled every damn thing in sight, but the water kept flowing. By the time I located the water valve, I was standing in two inches of water. Someone must have tightened the valve with a wrench because it took me forever to shut the sonofab**** off. When I finally did get it turned off, I phoned the front desk and asked them to send someone up with a plunger. An hour later, I was still sopping up water with towels and wringing them out in the bathtub and still no plunger. By now, water had soaked into the carpet just outside the bathroom, and it was spreading ever wider into a squishy pool. It took 3 more calls to the front desk before someone finally showed up with a friggin’ plunger!

The following day started out decent enough. I spent 10 hours, driving to Tulsa and actually got quite a bit of work done in the car. The day went into the crapper, though, about an hour after I arrived at the hotel. I had just settled in and decided to order room service. Nothing fancy, a little chicken fettuccine and salad.

The food arrived in about 20 minutes and for the first time in about a week and a half, I didn’t inhale my food then jump back into work. I actually chilled out and ate dinner while watching a little television.

About half way through my meal I noticed that the chicken had a strange sweet aftertaste to it. I got a little leery and figured it best to stick with the salad. Twenty minutes later I found myself wheezing like an asthmatic and red whelps start appearing on my arms. Soon to follow, vomiting and diarrhea. It got so bad I didn’t know which end to aim at the toilet first. Somewhere between the wheezing, vomiting, and scratching, swallowing suddenly became a major chore. One look in the mirror confirmed that my tongue had literally swollen to twice its normal size, and my neck looked like it had golf balls growing beneath the skin. Yeah, it was about that time I started to get a little freaked out and figured this too would not pass.

I managed to get to the phone and call the front desk to ask if someone could take me to a local hospital. They could barely understand what I was saying because it sounded like I was talking through a mouthful of cotton batting. When they finally figured out what was going on, the night manager asked if I could make it downstairs. (I was on the 9th floor.) I hung up, grabbed my wallet, and the next thing I knew I was stumbling through the lobby. I don’t even remember getting to the elevator and riding down.

The moment the manager saw me, he ordered one of the guys behind the registration desk to call 911. And yeah, you guessed it, a few minutes later, right there in the lobby for all the world to see, I’ve got EMTs running inside with defibrillators, oxygen masks, and a rolling gurney. By this time, the only way I could breathe was bending over, and even then it was extremely labored. My blood pressure reading was 80/52 and my oxygen level read 70%. Without further ado, I was hoisted onto the gurney and loaded into an ambulance. I could feel myself drifting in and out of consciousness, which really freaked me out as I’d never ‘passed out’ before, and it felt like that was exactly what was about to happen. Everything around me seemed to cloud over behind a foggy veil. I felt needles being jabbed into me, sirens wailing, people talking loudly in my face, repeatedly asking me my name and what day it was. I clearly heard, however, when one of the EMTs said, “Don’t be surprised if they stick a breathing tube down your throat when you get there. They might even have to cut a hole to get air to you.” Yeah, that thought really helped me breathe easier!

The next thing I knew I was being rolled into a hospital emergency room with waiting doctors. More needle sticks, more questions, still answered in thick-tongued slurs. I heard words like Anaphylaxis, steroids, epinephrine, and other weird names they were sticking into my veins for the swelling and vomiting. As I sat there (lying down was impossible as it completely cut off my air supply) I was jabbed and poked, prodded and tagged and signed paperwork that I couldn’t even read. Fortunately, the swelling started to go down pretty quickly and no tubes or cuts were necessary. Nearly four hours later, groggy and lightheaded, I was in a cab heading back to the hotel.

Needless to say, chicken fettuccine is off my menu list for a VERY long time.