Picnic in the Park

Our Congregation was giving a going away party for two of our pioneers who are moving at the park. Mina is still sick so I was going alone. Today was such a beautiful day I decided to ride my bike the eight miles to the park.

Food was served and I had the misfortune of grabbing a cookie containing peanuts in some form. I have bad peanut allergies. Usually when I eat peanuts accidentally there is just a little discomfort or maybe I throw up. Nothing too dreadful. Well today was not normal. I started feeling really bad, really fast.

I jumped on my bike and rode back home which nearly killed me. My chest was tight and my skin was itchy. My heart was pounding furiously. Finally, I made it home and grabbed my emergency asthma inhaler and took some puffs hoping that it would go away. It didn't.


Rebekah decided to go out shopping with her mother so I found myself home alone and quickly feeling worse and worse. So I called Rebekah to let her know I was driving to the hospital. I should have called an Ambulance; but it felt like overkill. I could barely drive and almost hit a pedestrian and then ran a stop sign and almost hit another car.

Upon making it to the emergency room my face had turned ghost white and my arms were bumpy and red. They checked my breathing and rushed me to the back where they started an IV and fed me some benadryl and some epiniphrine They plugged me up with some O2 and administered a couple albuterol breathing treatments.

I've had this allergy all my life and the only other time it landed me in the hospital was the very first incident as a small child. Usually it's no big deal; I can't fathom why this time was different. Usually when I bite into something I can tell it has peanuts in it and spit it out. This time it was only after I had ate the whole cookie. But even when I've had experiences like that it didn't almost kill me.

At 6:30 I was released from the ER and Rebekah came and took me home. I have insurance but I'm still set back $75.00. But I guess $75.00 is worth it to be alive? There was a couple seconds when I was worried that I wouldn't get to finish my book.

In retrospect it would have really been nice if they shoved a breathing tube down my throat. I still have to write something like that for my book and it's so much easier to use real life experience over what you read about. I don't like to fake it. The good is that I got a nice ER experience in my head for a couple of parts. I was sleepy because of the drugs they were giving me but I still tried to pay attention to the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings.