Just another Saturday night in the E.R. (Part 1)

As a preamble to this two-part, true story, I should state that I’m not a sickly person. While I occasionally might feel a little under the weather, I rarely succumb to the kind of cold or flu that would keep me from going to work (despite my attendance history at past jobs indicating otherwise). In fact, there was a three-year stretch in college that I didn’t get so much as a sniffle. Probably because any cold or flu virus that tried to attach itself to me was quickly eradicated by copious amounts of booze and nacho cheese. Take that, germs!

But after eight years in George W. Bush’s America, I seemed to have turned into something of an anxious person. If nothing else, those eight years helped me fine-tune my sensitivity to when something just isn’t right (thanks for the memories, W!). Add in a family history of heart disease, and you’ve got a recipie for a Saturday night in the emergency room. [For maximum effect, cue the Bay City Rollers classic, "Saturday Night" now.]

Spinning Off the Face of the Planet

Sitting in the West Theater of the Theater Building in Chicago on Saturday night, I was dizzy. Very dizzy. The kind of dizzy where you’ve had too much alcohol to stand, but not enough to pass out. My wife and I were there to watch my friend’s comedy troupe perform at Chicago Sketch Fest, but despite everyone laughing around me, I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I felt like I was about to spin off the Earth a la Superman II.

My heart began to race. My palms grew sweaty. I couldn’t catch my breath and then … nothing. One deep breath and the dizziness was gone, the heart rate back to normal.

Weird, I thought. What the hell was that?

Two minutes later, I could feel my heart rate drop and my eyes rolled back in my head. Fighting to stay conscience, I shifted nervously in my seat, taking deep and deliberate breaths. My wife turned to me and asked if I was okay. Yes, I lied.

My heart began to race, my palms began to sweat, my arms and hands went numb.

Shit! Is this a heart attack? For crying out loud, I’m only 29. If only I’d eaten fewer Chili’s buffalo chicken fingers last weekend!

And then, just as before, it suddenly stopped. I felt fine. For two minutes.

This process repeated itself over and over again with varying degrees of intensity for next twenty minutes. Much like the results of the 2000 election, something just wasn’t right. I turned to my wife and told her what was going on. All business, she immediately ushered me out of the theater and into a cab, and in a matter of 20 minutes, my name was being called in E.R. waiting room.

Our bi-annual date night was off to a great start.

Pop Your Shirt Off, Sir

80, 160, 140, 110, 63, 140. My heart rate was all over the place.

“Any heart conditions, sir?” the admitting nurse asked.

“Not that I know of, but heart disease runs in my family,” I said.

“Any drugs tonight? Cocaine?”

“No, no.”

“Any Viagra?”

“What? No!”

The nurse peered over her glasses.

“You’d be surprised what kids your age do for fun,” she said.

I reeled at the thought of some 30 year-old out there eating Viagra sandwiches in hopes of rocking an erection for more than four hours.

“Okay, go ahead and pop both your shirts off, sir, and we’ll get an EKG.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I need you to sit on this bed and take your shirts off so we can get you hooked up to the EKG machine.”

I looked around me. Each patient room surrounding the nurse’s station was occupied.

“You want me to take my shirt off? Here?” I asked.

“Yeah, your room will be ready shortly, but we need to get an EKG now, okay?” She seemed to be losing her patience.

While I’m wouldn’t consider myself a self-conscience individual (case in point), the years have been a little tedious to my physique. How tedious you ask? Well, I’m not fat enough to be proud of it like Kevin James, Jonah Hill or Jay Leno’s ego, but I’m not skinny enough to not feel a little chubby when I pop my shirt off. Make sense? Maybe not. Perhaps the best way for me to explain what I’m calling, “The Quasi-Public, Shirtless EKG,” is if you allow me to paint you a mental picture:

Picture a man with red hair and a redder beard, standing pale-faced and apprehensive in a crowded E.R. After a brief exchange with a nurse, the man begins to slowly and awkwardly remove his shirts. First, the button-down. That’s not so bad, is it? While it is a little snug, his t-shirt underneath seems clean and thus far, the man remains unoffensive to your senses.

But then, against all common sense, you see this man begin to remove his t-shirt, revealing red blotches pitched against his pasty white skin. The blotches are the result of a half hour of shallow breathing, but that is of no comfort to you. That shit is everywhere and it’s gross.

The nurses sit the man down on a gurney and that’s when you notice that perhaps he shouldn’t have left his jeans in the dryer for so long. While admittedly, you do find his lower half—particularly his luscious ass—amazingly hunky, the snugness of his jeans have caused a pond of man-gut to bottleneck around his midsection. It’s as if someone squeezed just the bottom half of a stick of butter, then left the results on the counter for all to see. Oh, the humanity!

Then, just when you think the worst is over, the nurses move him into what can only be called, “The Fat, Hunchback Thinker,” position, and in the blink of an eye, his belt gets sucked into a black hole of guttness. As the nurses apply EKG electrodes to his body, your eyes travel from the carnage of his midsection to his chest, where his hunched position has created two gigantic, heaving man-breasts. You vomit a little in your mouth.

Someone please help that man put his shirt back on! you scream. But no one hears you. Your embarrassment for the giant gutted, heaving breasted, bearded redhead grows and you look to his wife, who is comforting him at his side. You poor woman, you think. How could he do this to his body when you’re so hot?!? The giant gutted, heaving breasted, bearded redhead looks at you and shrugs. I like cheese, he says. You vomit in your mouth once again.

And just when any hope of ever getting sexually aroused again seems lost, the giant gutted, heaving breasted, bearded redhead is finally offered a proper gown and is allowed to sit in a manner more conducive to hiding unsightly man-fat. Your nightmare of embarrassment is over. But for the giant gutted, heaving breasted, bearded redhead, it’s just beginning.

Look for the conclusion in the next few days. And in case you were wondering, I’m fine now.