Part I Enough time has passed, the scars have healed, the last bills are paid, and I've hinted at it often enough in past articles that I feel I'm now mentally ready to explain my unexpected brush with surgery. While obviously not a stranger to the Emergency Room, my usual casualties tend to be, well, "casual", like sprains from sports, cuts from cooking, minor knock-abouts from karate self-destruction or automobile attacks. The last thing I expected was mutiny from within. Picture if you will: it's Halloween, a cool blustery evening of crinkled brown leaves and a sky remarkably clear of rain clouds that would normally spoil a Trick-or-Treater's evening. I rushed home from a workshop on "Media and Ethics in the MTV Generation" (no joke!) so I'd have enough time to jump into a costume and meet the kiddies from the neighborhood with a bowlful of candy. [I had high hopes this year since last year's no-shows for the newest couple on the block was depressing and I hoped that now we had earned our stripes as "safe folk" where kids could come, accompanied by parental witches and ghouls, and share the delight of eating us out of sugar and home.] So inspired, I hurried about the house throwing on a black dress and cloak, applying face paint and dimming the lights so that the jack-o'-lantern beckoned from the front step, and I settled down to await the doorbell's chime. Children came and went, gaggles of costumes inspired by Disney and Scary Movie, and I shared the caloric delights of Starbursts, Hershey's Kisses and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups as the night wore on. My husband came home and joined me in the fun: mostly the nibbling rather than the all-out costume, but I comforted myself that I have an entire lifetime to get him to dress up like a freak. It was around ten o'clock when it hit me: the nausea. Being a veteran of the Halloween Binge I didn't think much of it: I'd eaten more sweets in the past few hours than I had in the past month, it's no wonder I had a tummy-ache! I cut off the sweets and made a large cup of chamomile. Watching TV with Jon, we determined the last of the 'Treaters had probably come and gone, so we could pack up the stuff with little guilt and I could get out of my duds and into comfy flannels again. I, however, found I was having a tough time getting up from the couch (not too surprising a thing since our couch is a post-grad monstrosity full of sagging pillows and broken boards that tend to swallow a victim whole within its foam; it is nicknamed the "carnivorous couch") -- this time, it was because I felt I was permanently bent in two. As soon as I stood, I knew I was in trouble. I stumbled into the bathroom and stayed there. For a very... very... looooooong time! Suffice to say my body no longer could decide which way it wanted to let loose, so had decided on all of them. At once. Anyone who has ever been in this situation can attest that besides all the gross details, your body gets a workout as if you've been doing sit-ups for an hour while some sadist simultaneously kicks you in the kidneys. Somewhere in there, my conscious mind honed-in on a picture of one of the sniffling kids who had graced my door: one of those little snot-bags had given me the flu. Damn those meddling kids! Jon, ever considerate, asked if he could do anything. Mostly my answers involved slapping the floor or shaking my head, but I eventually croaked, "No, I'll be fine." He wisely waited until some more intelligible conversation could take place before intervening further and settled back to wait. Finally, I managed to get up and stumble into the shower. I thought standing under hot water sounded like a pretty good idea...until I tried it. Standing, that is. I found out that all I could really manage was sort of hunching under the shower, then curling up into a ball on the tile floor as water pelted me from above. Then I had to use the toilet again and the very thought brought me to mental ruin. Jon pointed out that maybe we should go to the hospital. "I'm fine." I'm insisted. "Just sick." But even I had to concede that this flu, if flu it were, came on pretty quick. What else had happened today besides hordes of little walking agent O's coming to my doorstep and breathing all over me? Grabbing with their phlegmy, sticky fingers through a bowl of...candy. The candy! (My heart skipped a beat.) No, what if the candy... (My brain hiccupped.) Raised in the 70's during the critical Halloween change-over when homemade foods were no longer acceptable because all sorts of unsavory things like cyanide in Tylenol and razor blades in apples were becoming a problem, and all "treats" were welcome to X-rays at the hospitals or must be individually-wrapped to protect the innocent, all these things flooded into my mind, and I wondered if it was possible that the candy had been tampered. Suddenly my inclinations towards the children did a one-eighty (since my stomach and innards had done similarly, why not have the brain join-in too?): I may have inadvertently poisoned the neighbor children! Jon! Call 9-1-1! How will we find them all? I don't even know the neighbors' names...oh, they'll never let the kids come over now! Visions of sugar-plum fairies vomiting filled my head; gagging ghosts, puking princesses, diarrheic Draculas -- it was a Halloween fiasco that started at my house! I went to tell Jon, but I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything. I was in such pain, it longer longer occurred to me as pain, it was simply a state of being -- like a constant hum -- as I lay in a fetal position, naked on the bathroom floor next to the toilet. Jon stopped by for his regular check-in and looked not the least bit surprised at my present condition. I was furious (dampened by pain) and thought as loudly as I could, "Stop standing there and help me save the children! They may be poisoned! Call the police!" All I really said was a meek "mwp" noise like a kitten burp. Jon spoke calmly and clearly as if to a small, stupid child: "I've just called 9-1-1..." Thank heavens, I thought, we know each other enough to communicate telepathically! "...the ambulance is on it's way and we're going to the hospital." No... I mentally wailed, Not me! The children! It's the kids that are... Then I saw myself as I'm sure Jon saw me: naked, wet, shivering on the floor in a fetal curl around an unsoiled toilet because I no longer had anything left in me to hurl no matter how much my body tried. I was not okay. I was not fine. There was something definitely wrong with me and I was on my way to the hospital.\ I finally swallowed and steadied my breathing enough to say one thing: "Get me my clothes." The EMTs arrived and put an oxygen mask on my face; I heard them asking Jon if I took any drugs, was allergic to anything or if I ingested anything unusual. I wanted to confess to the candy, but I couldn't say anything: just nod or shake my head. They were willing to carry me out but couldn't get the gurney up the stairs. I shook my head; I would walk out of my own house. And I did: carefully, gingerly, gently. And then I collapsed on the gurney just outside my front door that was littered with people and red-and-blue flashing lights. As they got me into the ambulance, I managed to say something about the children. Jon tried to get into the back of the ambulance with me, but one of the men held him back. "Sir, are you planning to come with us?" "Yes, she's my wife." "Well, do you have someone to look after your kids?" "What kids?" "Your wife was muttering something about the kids." "Oh, no, we don't have any kids. She's talking about the neighborhood kids. She thinks it might have been the candy that did it." Oh Jon, I love you, we CAN speak telepathically! This was some comfort to me although it was probably far more likely I had been babbling this for hours in delirium and didn't remember any of it. "Ah, well it wasn't the candy. We have to get her to the hospital now." I don't remember much of the ambulance ride, besides every bump in the road, although I do remember being wheeled into a small room just inside the door as the EMTs scattered and a balding man with a clipboard tried to get my crucial information. Jon took care of it. I just lay there and waited. It was cold. I was shivering but I was sure the room was also far too cold. And bright. Florescent yellow-bright that makes even healthy people look sickly, so I couldn't even imagine how I looked. I was wearing my glasses, a sweatshirt and sweatpants living up to their name, covered in cold sweat. (No underwear. Jon hadn't the time and I hadn't the coordination.) It ran through my mind that I couldn't believe I was there in the hospital and that there was something so wrong with me that I had to be taken by ambulance to get there. That frightened me. I had never had that experience before. I didn't like it.