GOING DOWN.....AGAIN

I have an “issue” that scares me and I don't know why it happens, where it comes from or what to do about it. The one thing I am sure of is that it happens at some of the most inopportune times. If I knew when it would happen, I would be able to schedule accordingly. Here is what happens – whatever I happen to be doing, I begin to sweat profusely around the head, face and neck area. It's a clammy sweat with big drops, if that makes any sense and it seems to come from nowhere. I then get light headed, short of breath and a bit disoriented. My blood pressure plummets and it's very uncomfortable and feels like what I imagine “slipping away” does. By the time I can find and identify a chair, it's hard to get to it without falling on the floor. That's when my wife will try to lie me down with my feet elevated. She then gives me lots of very salty water in an attempt to raise my blood pressure back to some semblance of a normal level. It usually works but then I will need a few days to recuperate because it feels like I've been hit by a truck from the inside. As I mentioned earlier, it's timing is pathetic. I have had to have an ambulance meet two boats I've been on over the last few years. One time I was on a lake in Texas and the other I was on a fishing boat in Florida. That one, at least, provided some great entertainment for a friend. He and his wife were visiting from Dallas and had never been fishing on a boat. He is from Nigeria, which is partially landlocked and she is from Zimbabwe, also quite a distance from the coast. They couldn't wait to go out on the ocean and fish and I was very excited to be able to treat them to a new adventure. We have a lot of half-day fishing cruises here and I had secured our places on one. We got to our first destination, about 45 minutes from shore and dropped our lines in the water to no avail. We tried a few other spots and were still fishless when I felt the sweat coming on. “NOT NOW,” I screamed to myself. Even though it was a private thought, it was loud enough in my mind that I'm certain those on the other side of the boat heard me. As I started to go down, my friends wife was able to catch me and place my head on her lap as she took my pulse. She is a registered nurse who is in the process of becoming a doctor, so, I at least felt like I was in good hands. She started to panic a little when she had trouble finding the pulse, but eventually she was able to locate a very weak one. Meanwhile, the captain had already radioed in to shore to make sure an ambulance would be waiting at the dock as a police boat raced to meet us. It took 3 men to get me onto the police boat where my friends wife sat, once again with my head in her lap and he stood on the front of the boat as it's pilot gave it full throttle. This was where the fun began. We were going very fast, jumping over our own wake and that of other boats and my friend was giggling like a school girl........he was so excited. He looked down at me and through his laughter said, in his very thick Nigerian accent, “Bob, this is soooo much fun. It's like “Miami Vice” without a gun.” We arrived safely back at the dock where the ambulance was, indeed, waiting for me. I handed my friend my car keys and told him to call my wife and meet me at the hospital. The car, however, was about 6 miles away and after getting a ride back to it, my friend realized that he had no clue where he was or where he needed to go. That didn't matter, though, because he was still on cloud nine from the police boat ride. By the time they had been able to find the hospital, I was doing better and was able to say “You're welcome. I'm really happy that you enjoyed yourself.” As you can see, I will go to any length to show my friends a fun time when they visit us in South Florida. I had another episode just a few nights ago. I had gone downstairs to get some peanut butter toast and, as I was loading the bread into the toaster, the sweat began. Before I knew it, I was trying to identify a chair and make my way to it. My wife came downstairs to see why it was taking so long for the bread to toast and found me, in time to work her salty magic. We got me back upstairs to bed but, around 2am, all that salt had me extremely thirsty. My wife offered to get some water for me, but I protested that I could get down the stairs to get it myself and told her to go back to sleep. That's when my foot slipped on the second step and I tumbled down the stairs, I got to the bottom and to the fridge in record time. The next morning I was, once again, very happy to wake up. Period. I knew it would take a few days to start feeling normal, whatever that is these days, but I couldn't move my left arm more than a couple of inches without extreme pain. I had sprained something on the way down the steps and it decided to rear it's ugly pain the next day. I am tired of these “episodes.” They put a damper on whatever I happen to be doing. It ruins it for me and whoever I happen to be doing it with. The latest has to have been the worst so far, though. I really wanted that peanut butter toast.