Blood on the Brain Part 1: My Initial Diagnosis

It is never a great idea to make a self-diagnosis when that diagnosis, if wrong, could lead to death; better to check with someone fit to make that diagnosis. It's even worse if you make that diagnosis in the midst of uncontrolled vomiting (later dry heaving) and a world that won't stop spinning around you, even for a second, as though you are on a merry-go-round that had its super turbo switch triggered and then broken off so it can't be stopped. This is exactly what I did.

One of the possible starting points for this story was a dinner my ex-fiance had together at a restaurant named Sia, the nicest Chinese restaurant in Prague. It's a beautiful place with three floors and a very bold style that has a smallish menu but every dish is done with care. The service was excellent, and Veronica, my ex, and I both enjoyed every dish, including the only truly well made dim sum I have had in this city. The dim sum we had included shrimp dim sum, two pieces of which we were too full to finish, so we brought it home and put it in the fridge for later. Later turned out to be two days and I remember being glad it was there, eating it, and thinking nothing other than, mmm, that's good or something of the sort.

A lot had been going on around this time. My former business partners and I were watching our business flounder, which was bringing on a great many arguments (and later a somewhat acrimonious split with questions concerning where all the money had gone), two home invasions as well as the uncertainty that more might follow, the suicide of Veronika's brother, and living in a tiny room with Veronika and the six cats (all but the original two being rescue animals); the room had it's own toilet and a mattress on the floor for a bed.

So, that same night as I had had the two remaining dim sum, I was just about to climb onto the mattress to sleep or possible pester Veronika about getting back together, the world suddenly started spinning around faster than it had the one time I had spun around six times with my forehead connected to a baseball bat that had one end connected to the floor. For a moment, it was funny, I tried to get over to the bathroom to sit on the toilet, but I couldn't walk where I wanted, instead, like people doing the bat thing above, I was wobbling at a tangent away from where I meant to go. Veronika laughed but quickly grew concerned as she had to catch me to prevent me from falling. She herded me to the toilet and I promptly started throwing up relentlessly. As I sat in the bathroom or kneeled every few minutes to resume vomiting, I came to the conclusion that this was all the result of the shrimp, which had apparently gone bad. My diagnosis? Food poisoning. I had been given the impression in the past by stories others had told me that hospitals can't do anything and that it lasts around three days. So, after the initial round of vomiting had turned into dry heaving, I told Veronika that I would wait it out; I did not have money to spare and ambulances cost money, as do doctors even when they do little more than take a quick look and tell you what you already know.

I spent the next two days watching the world spin at this reckless, uninterrupted pace, sitting on the small couch, unable to move (even moving my head more than a few inches or so would immediately bring back the dry heaving), waiting for the symptoms to diminish. Veronika, after the first night, kept insisting that we call for an ambulance and I kept resisting. At sometime around two or three pm the second day, I finally relented and consented to calling the hospital, describing what was happening and asking if an ambulance was necessary. I live in the Czech Republic and speak passable Czech, though I wasn't in a state that allowed me to pay close attention to her call. What I do remember understanding was that the person on the other end at first seemed to be agreeing with me that it was probably food poisoning, however, when Veronika mentioned that my eye whites were yellow (something I hadn't known until just that moment) his agreement faltered, and an ambulance was sent on its way.