How Not To Celebrate A Birthday: A Tale Of Horror

October 18th, 2011 by csdaley

I am going to warn you right now, this blog is not for the faint of heart. Bad things are going to be happening people, bad things. You have been warned.

This last weekend was my birthday. Birthdays are kind of funny for me because I don’t really care much about age (other than I would like to live a lot longer than most of the last generation of men in my family). Honestly, I am just a big kid. Every year of age which gets added to my body I subtract straight out of my maturity level (this isn’t really true. I am actually very mature when I need to be. I just don’t need to be all that often).

We had big plans for this weekend. Things started to go wrong months ago. We were supposed to see my friend Kim play her wonderful music on Saturday night in San Francisco. Unfortunately, she could not get a venue and had to change it to Sunday. We couldn’t make it Sunday because we had to drive home. No worries though these things happen. Instead we planned to meet up with Kim before we left for home on Sunday.

Then I ate something on Friday which changed everything. I don’t know what it was but it gave me food poisoning. If you have never had food poisoning before you are lucky. The pain in my stomach that night was agonizing. It felt like someone had punched a fist though my stomach and was twisting my intestines. For six straight hours I wished I would just pass out because of the pain. If governments decided to use food poisoning as a way to extract information from operative agents from other countries it would be a devastatingly effective tool. I would have told them anything.

I was about to haul myself into the emergency room (around 4 am) when the pain finally started to die down. Sheri and I fell asleep for a few hours and then made our way to the Bay Area. Saturday went by without too much of a problem but I never felt 100%.

Sunday was a different story. I never really felt right. We had lunch in San Francisco and then went to a play. The theater was really hot and the play was really not. Sheri and I were exhausted. We both started to get migraines. For the first time since we have been together we bailed on a play at intermission. It’s possible at another time we would have been more forgiving but this was not one of them.

We went and met with Kim at Mission Pie. You want to know how to tell when you are really sick? When the thought of eating pie horrifies you. The migraine kept getting worse and by the time our wonderful visit with Kim was over I was in trouble. We took BART back to our car. BART was not a good thing. Every bump made my stomach feel like it was going to void itself. I held on until our exit and then went all Exorcist on the BART bathroom.

I am fairly certain everyone in the BART station could hear me. It sounded like I was dying and it wasn’t over quick. I did feel a little better after but it didn’t change that we still had a 3 hour drive ahead of us. The funny thing about the weekend was it should have been a complete disaster, but anytime I spend with Sheri is always a good time (especially out of Red Bluff). We decided that I get a birthday weekend do-over. We head back to San Francisco Halloween weekend for a weekend of theater. This time I will try not to poison myself.

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