I earned a free ticket to the College Dance via my friend Ramin, who happened to be the organizer of the event. He picked me up along with some friends and we went to the hall and set up the tables befpre the dance started.
I had a total of $5.00 on me. Beer was $1.00 each. Here we go again with my favorite subject, Math.
Today that sum might get you one beer but back then I was poised to get 5. Has anyone called Mensa yet? I'm bordering on genius.
When the dance commenced I decided to ask a girl if she would be interested in a dance and she said yes.
While dancing, I lost my balance and fell over. She thought I was inebriated and walked off the floor. Embarrassed and feeling disoriented, I staggered to the bathroom and splashed copius amounts on my face.
I simply felt like I was drunk but had to that point of the evening had only consumed 2 of my allotted beer.
My face was flushed and yet I could not explain this loss on equilibrium. By the nights end I was feeling like someone who had consumed well over the limit of no return and would be snuggling up to the porcelain throne at any given moment.
My friend asked who would like to be dropped off first and I replied "Me".
I was dropped off and remember that with each step I took the house oscillated as if my eyes were on pivots. I made my way to the bathroom, where I again splashed cold refreshing water on my burning face.
A headache had begun some time before the end of the dance and I decided that six 222's would do the trick to thwart the onslaught of pain from what was becoming an all out assault on my pain tolerance.
I climbed into bed thinking that I would fall asleep and all would be right as reign come the morning.
As I tried to get to sleep, I found the coolness of the pillow quite comforting all the while the ache in my head increased.
I tossed the pillow from one side to another, switching from one pillow to the next, one side to the other to no avail.
Finally, the pain inside my head won out and I began to cry.
They describe the rupturing of a brain aneurysm as the greatest pain you will ever know. I would say they were being quite conservative with their statement.
If someone could hit your big toe with a ball peen hammer, over and over, initially the first strike is the worse and after a while the pain subsides to a dull roar.
With the brain aneurysm, the pain increases and stays at full volume for several hours.
As you may recall, I walked in stocking feet on a gravel road wit a broken foot, walked for 10 days on crutches with my left wrist broken, none of which minutely compared to the excruciating pain I was beginning to endure.
It became so intense, I began to vomit. My mom at my side cooling my forehead with a damp face cloth.
I would drift in and out of consciousness and catapult up and over to the side of the bed where the bucket lay with drive heaves as I had sometime earlier already emptied my stomach's contents. The pain seemed to start at the back of the skull and charge forward to my left eyeball where it felt my throbbing eye would explode from out of its socket. This continued for several hours until sometime in the early hours exhaustion won out and I finally slept.
Getting up later that Sunday morning, I recall steadying myself with the use of the hallway walls and literally staggering into the kitchen. My mom noticed that my speech was altered along with my balance and decided that if there was no improvement by Monday, she would send me to the doctor.
My father felt it was just a hang over and that I would be fine in another day,
My behavior of the past few years had not garnered many votes of support from either my teachers nor of that of my parents and soon my credibility would be tested again, where my very life hung in the balance.
Thank God for a mother's instinct and that of an up and coming doctor.
So Halloween, is indelibly marked on my soul, the treat was an aneurysm and now the trick was how to survive from one.
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