The Onset

I'm used to all sorts of distractions now while speaking: the Heckler, the Snorer, the "Drink Slurper"er, the "Drink Straw Squeaker"er, the "Constantly Whispering"er, and the "I Don't Have a Question I Was Just Raising My Hands to Stretch"er.

Today, I found a new distraction.

While halfway through the current MSDN Events ASP.NET optimization talk, I noticed that there was a word on my monitor which was missing a letter.

Seemed a little odd, eh? I looked away and then checked it again: Yup - still missing.

Shifting my eyes over the paragraph I was looking at, I saw that I had a blind spot, and that the blind spot was covering up letters, one after the other, as my gaze swept them.

"Lame," thought I to myself.

I decided to ignore it, though, hoping that it was just a momentary anomaly and that it would go away in a minute or two.

A minute or two later, I decided to give the audience an impromptu twenty minute break. It's weird starting a break with the words, "We're going to have to take a break because I seem to be going blind right now," but these things happen. The spot, you see, was growing.

Once I was out of the room, I headed over to the reception area and began pestering people for Advil. I figured that I was having some kind of a migraine-related experience, and I thought that Advil would be a good way to begin resolving it. No dice. There wasn't any Advil in the place, so Rob Westover, one of the other presenters, ran across the street to pick some up at the store.

While he was gone, my vision went from "Hey - it's not so bad - a little Advil would be nice, though" to "Where in the bloody !@#$ing hell did the room go?"

Shortly after this period, my extremities became weak and useless. I tried to use my iPaq, but my fingers just fumbled around its case. If you've ever tried to play the piano in a room that's fallen below freezing, then you know what I'm talking about.

Meanwhile, the blindness was somehow managing to get worse and worse. The pattern of blind spots was shifting constantly, and there were little bits of "fire" zipping around my field of vision. If it weren't for the fact that my mother had a stroke when she was forty, thereby instilling in me a morbid fear of anything even remotely resembling serious neurological upset, I might have found it beautiful. Unfortunately, given my distaste for potential brain damage, I found the whole thing horrifying.

Then the aphasia kicked in.

If you've never experienced aphasia, then consider yourself fortunate. As someone who prides himself on the (ab)use of the English language, there's nothing worse to me than suddenly losing my ability to comprehend it. When aphasia kicks in, words pour out of people's mouths, but the words don't make any sense. They arrive in your brain in a disjointed fashion, completely stripped of meaning. You can hear them, but you can't understand them. Weird, no? Yes.

I thought it might be wise to mosey on over to the hospital, so the concierge arranged a ride for me in one of the hospital's own limos (OK - it was an ambulance, damn it, and it was embarrassing).

First some firemen arrived, which seemed weird to me. I mean, like, I wasn't on fire, you know? I was blind. You can't solve that with high water pressure (as far as I know). They didn't seem to know why they were there either. I felt sorry for them and was tempted to start a small fire in one of the nearby wastebaskets just so they'd have something to do, but that would have required being able to see the matches as I struck them, and seeing as how I couldn't see a damn thing, that was just right the bloody hell out of the question.

Then the paramedics arrived, and they seemed about as prepared for the situation as the firemen. I think I had to explain to them about nineteen times that I was going temporarily blind and that I was hoping they'd do something about it.

"Yeah. Right. Whatever. So, when was the last time you had an anxiety attack?" one of them asked.

"I'M NOT HAVING A GOD DAMNED ANXIETY ATTACK, YOU BLOOD-PRESSURE MONITORING DRIP INSERTER - ANY ANXIETY THAT I'M CURRENTLY EXPERIENCING IS A DIRECT RESULT OF YOUR STUPIDITY, WHICH SEEMS TO BE INVERSELY PROPORTIONAL TO MY BLOODY GOD DAMNED PATIENCE - FOR THE LAST TIME, I'M BLIND! BLIND, BLIND, BLIND!" I responded, demonstrating the sort of tact for which I've become well known in certain circles.

He sighed, and we continued to the hospital.

The Emergency Room

I don't remember much about the trip to the ER, nor do I remember much of what happened when I got there. I do remember that Rob, who decided to come to the hospital with me after picking up the Advil, somehow beat the ambulance there. I thought that was pretty cool and filed it under "To be appreciated at a later date when I have a little more bandwidth."

After that, it's mostly blurry. My first clear memories are of The Gown.

If you've ever visited an ER, then you know The Gown. This is the lame-ass garment that all ER staff will force you to wear, even if all you have is an ingrown eyelash. It's fabulous because it doesn't matter how roly-poly a representation of rotundity or how brittely snappy branchy twiggish you are - The Gown was forged in the Devil's own third-world clothing manufacturing facility, and was designed to ensure that your ass is visible to the entire universe, from every angle (even the front) for the entire duration of your frockage.

I have a theory that The Gown is meant to shame you into never returning to the ER again except in the most extreme (some might even say "emergency") situations, keeping the hypochondriacs at bay.

Yay, though the nurses may apply balm to your bruises, somebody's going to have to put your pride in a cast and teach it how to walk again after it visits the emergency room.

I hate that bloody stupid gown.

To make matters worse, I was assigned the most incredible bastard of a nurse. Every time she said something to me, I gave her the look that Castro used to give me when I tried to explain to him that humping arms is not OK. She could see the confusion on my face, and she'd say, "DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? DO I HAVE TO REPEAT EVERYTHING I'M SAYING? YOU AREN'T PAYING ATTENTION. PAY ATTENTION, PLEASE."

Well, 'scuse the hell out of little ol' me for GOING BLIND IN THE HOSPITAL OF THE TERMINALLY BITCHY. I'll exercise a little more discretion in the future with where I choose to lose my vision.

Seriously. I couldn't figure out if it was the aphasia, or if she genuinely couldn't make sense except when accusing people of not understanding her. Something tells me it's the latter for two reasons:

1) By this time, I could understand everybody else

2) Her "YOU AREN'T PAYING ATTENTION" speeches were very well rehearsed - almost as though she's been giving them every single bloody day of her adult life

Whatever the deal, she took off after a while to go verbally assault some old lady on a dialysis machine, which was a freaking relief for me.

Then some hospital orderlies came along and dragged my bare ass down to the CT chamber where they made me lie down on a table, told me to sit still, and then said they were going to take pictures of my brain.

Like I was born yesterday!

We've all been there, right? A bunch of burly men lead you into a room half-naked, make you lie down on a table, and then tell you that they're going to take snapshots of the gray matter. We all know where this leads, and I couldn't believe these two jokers thought I was going to fall for it (again).

Turns out, though, that they really were honestly interested in mapping the folds, nooks, and crannies of my mind meat.

A few minutes later, I found myself back in the ER, trying gracelessly to close the gown so that my beautiful cheeks wouldn't be exposed to every passing onlooker.

Then came the CT scan results. They didn't learn anything except that my brain is ENORMOUS, which is something that any old bastard off the street could have told them. Structurally, it seemed to be intact, every weaving section of my cerebral quadrospheres accounted for.

The final diagnosis was that some blood vessels in my head had dilated to the point that they were pressing against nerves in the surrounding tissue, causing my brain to go a bit haywire. The formal name for this condition is "complex vascular migraine."

In other words, I had a headache today.

People of Tacoma: I'm so terribly sorry that my brain picked today to go nuts. I had a lot of time this evening to think about my frustration, and I think it stinks that, of all the months in a year, and of all the weeks in a month, and of all the days in a week, and of all the hours in a day, my brain chose today during my MSDN Event to take a flying leap off the deep end. Thanks for coming out, and don't worry about this happening next time - I'm getting some nutso medication that should be able to stop these episodes as they begin, making it possible for me to talk right through them.