Chapter 2-Celebrations

Saturday, October 1^st started out in the late dawn with a slight chill of an early fall in the air and the weather was enough to stay warm with just a sweat shirt covering my long sleeve work shirt. To warm the early chill running through my sleepy body, I bought a hot cup of coffee at our local corner store. I was the one of the very few asked to work from 8:00 a.m. – noon . Clocking out at 12 o'clock noon , I arrived home very tired. I had to redirect my plans of working around house until it was time to celebrate the three best three years of my life! I settled down in bed to sleep for a while.

Awakening I, felt like I wasted the entire day sleeping for 5 hours instead of putting around the house fixing what was broke or adding touches. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes in the sitting position on the side of the bed, I sensed the urge to satisfy my thirst for water. Bouncing to my feet, I fetched and then retrieve a cup of cool water from the kitchen facet to satisfy this sudden uncontrollable urge. After gulping down a cup of water, the decision was made to go back to the bedroom and get ready to for our big night out of celebrating. I was headed towards the bedroom with a full cup of water gripped tightly in my right hand and suddenly, quicker than a flash of lighting an overwhelming dizzy feeling started to happen, followed by the right side of my body going numb. The oven saved my fall forward towards the ground. If I had Stroke Awareness knowledge, I would of took myself straight to hospital but the symptoms lasted seconds so unaware, I treated it as if nothing ever happened. Finally, returning to the bedroom I sat on the edge bed rubbing my forehead asking the headache to go away. Noticing I still had my cup of water, I took a sip.

The beautifully dressed wife and I decided to celebrate our third anniversary of vows at a Chi-Chi's Mexican restaurant with our wonderful neighbor friends joining us. Pulling away in my Ford Explorer, that still shined from the detailed washing I gave from the day before, I very gently put the peddle to the meddle heading off to an evening of fun with lots of money I earned. On route, I kept glancing and eying my wife's smile. Arriving at the restaurant and making our request for a booth seating the four of us, we found our way to the bar area waiting to be escorted to our requested table. Everyone ordered his or her alcohol beverage, while I ordered a pop because I still felt sick. Hiding my worsening symptoms our table was called. Settling in at our booth, I ordered a cold beer with my meal ignoring my symptoms because this sudden illness started to piss me off. My symptoms started to be noticed by others at the booth because when I was dropping my utensils and my words were slurring as if I was drunk.

At the same time, I was waving the waitress over to request an order in for another cold beer.

I insisted on having my dessert, (fried ice-cream) before everyone finished his or her dinner and eating it as if it was my last supper. While eating my dessert, I felt my eyes go blurry then I started seeing double. Without finishing my dessert, my wife grabbed me by the hand insisting something is wrong by the way, my eyes were acting. On the way to the checkout, it all started over again, except this time, the left side of body went numb causing me to fall backwards. Of course, the restaurants salad bar saved me from falling backwards onto my back. Gathering my bearings, I felt all of the other people in the restaurant’s eyes staring at me as if I was a drunken idiot. Finally, the four of us gathered around my truck and I agreed with all of them to go get checked out at the hospital, now!