"DO YOU HAVE A SEIZURE DISORDER?"

"Get ready to laugh, Lois. Get ready to laugh." --Peter Griffin, Family Guy


It was 8:45, Thursday night. I'm enthralled in the final 15 minutes of "So You Think You Can Dance" waiting with bated breath to see who would be crowned this season's champion.

"Come on, Sabra!"

My phone rings during the last commercial break. It must be Adrianne. No one else would dare disturb me at this crucial time in my life.

Nope. It's my neighbor.

Since the caller ID is set with her name, I answer the phone expecting her voice.

Again, I was wrong.

"Katy, are you at home alone?" It was her husband, Bob. (The names have been changed to protect the ignorant....idiots....I mean, innocent.)

"What?" I'm stammering, not quite sure what he'd even said.

"Are you home alone? This isn't a weirdo call." I'm thinking, Umm, yeah...so far it is.

"Yeah, David's here with me. What do you need?"

"mumblegarbleblahblah Emergency Room blahblah Blood Everywhere garblegarbleblah Susie burdlegumbleblah Watch the kids for me."

"Uh, yeah...I'll be right over." But in my head, I said, " Sure, gimme 15 minutes to watch the end of my show then I'll be there." I didn't though. I'm a good neighbor. I went straight over to sit with the three remaining children, all of whom were asleep.

(After I got there, I called Mamy and she watched the end of SYTYCD for me. Sabra won! Yay Sabra! I digress...)

So I get to Bob's house and he explains that his four year old daughter, Susie, had come to their bedroom covered in blood and was bleeding profusely from the back of her head. She said she fell out of bed but they didn't see any way that that much blood could have come from falling out of bed. He leaves for the hospital, says he'll call as soon as he knows something, and then 30 minutes later he comes back. He began packing a bag with clean p.j.'s for Susie and a clean t-shirt for Jane, the mom. He says, "You wanna go to the hospital? I can go if you don't want to. But I think you might be more comforting to Susie than me." I didn't really understand why a dad wouldn't want to be at the hospital with his wife and injured child, but, whatever. Yeah, I'll go.

Now, for those of you who know me, this is the part where you are thinking, "What the hell were you doing? You know you shouldn't volunteer to be around all that!" See, I'm a bit squeamish, if you can call it that. Any time my skin is punctured (injections, giving blood, etc.) or if I'm around someone who's just broken their arm or has some other kind of major injury, I have a tendency to lose consciousness.......and.......start convulsing. Like, a seizure. There, I said it.

But I had high hopes, as I do every time, that maybe I'd be just fine this time around. And so I was off to the ER, doing my neighborly good duty. Once I got there, Jane looked genuinely relieved to see me. She said that when Bob got there and saw Susie with her head bandaged with a turban of gauze, he told her to smile and he started taking pictures of her with his camera phone. Of course she started screaming, "Stop, daddy!! Stop it!" Then I understood why Bob had said I might be more comforting to Susie than he would.

They were both completely covered in blood. Susie's hair was reddish pink and Jane's yellow shirt now looked brown. She was still bleeding and I watched. Hey, I'm okay, so far. Cool. There were two ER nurses in there and we all worked to keep Susie, and Jane, at ease. 30 minutes go by and the nurse is still trying to stop the bleeding. He pulls off the gauze and I look. I see a 3/4 inch gash on the back of her head. Wow. I'm still looking and I don't feel the least bit sick! Awesome. This goes on for a while and there's talk of staples vs. stitches and the pros and cons of both. The doctor comes in and says that if he looks at the wound and it only needs one or two staples, he's not going to use anisthetic because injecting the anisthetic is very painful and requires at least two sticks. This is great. He's even expalining all this and I'm still good! He starts moving her blood-crusted hair out of the way...and I still watch. In actuality, the gash is more like two inches in length, or longer. And really.....really deep. I see him grab a syringe with a four-inch needle and he starts sticking it into the wound over and over and over again, not just once or twice. He moved the skin around so he could get under it and inside it and all around it. Susie is sobbing......it was really sad. Then he gets the staple gun thing and starts with that. One, two, three, four, five, (Good heavens, how many is this gonna take?!) six, seven....maybe eight. I think I lost count. I started to get a little light-headed. Okay, I'm glad that's finished because I don't think I should try to watch any more. The doctor shoots a staple out onto the bed sheet so we could see what it was that was going into her head. Fascinating. I need to sit down. I began to feel dizzy and light-headed. I sat down and just stared into space and tried to focus on my breathing. I'll be fine. I just need to sit for a minute. I hear the doctor talking to Jane about washing Susie's hair while the nurses try cleaning the remains of "monkey spit" (something used to stop the bleeding, I think) and chunks of dried blood from her hair. The colors of my shoes fade to black and white, then to a photo-negative.....



"DO YOU HAVE A SEIZURE DISORDER? DO YOU HAVE A SEIZURE DISORDER??"

When I come to, (yeah, that's right) the ER nurse is screaming at me. I'm so disoriented. I was sure that I'd been sleeping -- and dreaming. Wasn't I just dreaming? This isn't fun. What is going on??

She then turns to Jane. "Does she have a seizure disorder?"

Jane, "I....I don't think so."

"No." I whispered, now slightly aware of what had just happened.

"Do you know where you are?"

"Hospital." Barely audible.

"Are you alright?"

"I'm gonna be sick."

They bring me the pink bucket, wheel in a gurney, and lift me onto it. I'm drenched in sweat and totally pale, even my lips had lost color. They bring a wet cloth and put it on my forehead.

Nice. So, I guess I didn't need to watch...EVERYTHING.

"How are you feeling?"

"The back of my head really hurts. And my neck and shoulders."

"Oh, well that's because when you seized, you banged your head on the wall a few times. Then you were sliding out of the chair. We're surprised you didn't fall on the floor."

Fantastic.

*...sigh...*

Jane immediately starts apologizing. "I feel so bad! I thought you were joking around. All I did was laugh at you! I am sooo sorry."

"It's okay. I woulda laughed, too."

Jane wound up having to drive me home. She called David and says, "You married to a woman who passes out at the sight of blood? Well, she's sitting beside me in my car and you need to come downstairs and get her."

The next morning, David asks, "What were you doing? Why would you even try to do something like that?"

I pleaded, "But, I was fine! I was JUST FINE for like, 40 minutes!!"

He says, "Those were the 40 minutes you should have taken to REMOVE yourself from the area!"



Yeah.....



Susie's doing fine. Acts like nothing ever happened. As if getting seven staples in her little head wouldn't have been trauma enough, she also witnessed her lame-o neighbor having a seizure. (We all joked that I just couldn't let Susie get all the attention.) Still, no one is certain exactly how she hurt herself, but there was blood on the carpet by her bed. But, really...she's fine.

And so am I. Turns out I may have been unconscious for three to four minutes before I ever seized. ....That's awesome. But, I'm doing fine now. I was still a little light-headed when I went to work Friday. But I made it through with nothing more than a little bit of...whatsit called when you can't think of the right word? ...or when you use the completely wrong word? ...Aphasia. Yeah, that's it.

And what about the oh-so sensitive father, Bob, who sent his neighbor to the ER because of his inability to ....to not be an ass? Well, now that he's learned I have issues with blood and mangled bodies, he says he going to cut himself every time I come over, just to see if I'll pass out. Yeah, I told him I'd have to see a lot of blood before anything would happen, so he'd better cut deep.....real, real deep.





You stay classy, San Diego!