Didn't go into the light
Monday morning I woke up about 3am, and thought I smelled smoke. Thinking I should investigate, I got out of bed, and...
thud
I woke up on the floor, face down, in a ton of pain. I had no idea what had just happened, but my nose hurt, I had rugburn down my face, and my head ached. Kristie woke up and mumbled, "What are you doing?!" I wasn't really sure.
After an appropriate amount of web research, we decided I might have a concussion and decided I should go to the ER. We drove over to the nearby hospital, and I laid around for the next couple hours shivering in a hospital gown. The doctor was as baffled by my account of the story as I was recounting it. He did a series of checks, and decided that if I had a concussion, it was minor.
I got booked for a head x-ray and a tetanus shot for the broken nose. On a hunch, the doctor ran a carboxyhemoglobin test to see if I had carbon monoxide poisoning. The head x-ray involved moving my head in ways that the whiplash I had given myself did not really allow for, and now my arm hurt from the tetanus shot.
The doctor came back with the results of the carboxyhemoglobin test, oxygen in tow. I was too stunned to remember the number, but it was apparently rather high, particularly since I'd been sitting in the hospital for several hours before the test. It was so high, in fact, that my discharge instructions were not to re-enter my house until it was cleared by PG&E.
We returned home around 8am, and called PG&E. They assured me this was a top priority and a technician would be right out. We sat in the back yard, and made cautious forays into the house to get food. 4 hours of sitting in my bad yard later, I called again, and was assured that a technician would be out before 5pm. At 5 I called, and was told that the request had been given an all schedule, which meant that it could be until 8pm before the anyone showed up. I questioned their concept of top priority and reiterated that I was stuck outside my house with a broken nose and a closed head injury. She relented and a technician was dispatched within the hour.
The technician probe every orifice of our furnace and checked every nook of the house. There was no carbon monoxide, not surprisingly, since 15 hours had passed, but alarmingly, there was no CO source. The high winds must have drawn in CO from somewhere else, one of our neighbors, meaning there was little I could do to correct the problem but lick my wounds and spring for a better carbon monoxide tester.
The broken nose is healing fine, since I guess I fell down so straight the break was cleanly symmetrical. The whiplash has subsided, probably thanks to megadoses of Motrin. The rugburn on my face is still pretty prominent, however, and my coworkers are compelled to ask what happened to me. But I guess I'm probably lucky to be alive, and that I woke up when I did and brained myself, or I might have just gone off without a fight.
thud
I woke up on the floor, face down, in a ton of pain. I had no idea what had just happened, but my nose hurt, I had rugburn down my face, and my head ached. Kristie woke up and mumbled, "What are you doing?!" I wasn't really sure.
After an appropriate amount of web research, we decided I might have a concussion and decided I should go to the ER. We drove over to the nearby hospital, and I laid around for the next couple hours shivering in a hospital gown. The doctor was as baffled by my account of the story as I was recounting it. He did a series of checks, and decided that if I had a concussion, it was minor.
I got booked for a head x-ray and a tetanus shot for the broken nose. On a hunch, the doctor ran a carboxyhemoglobin test to see if I had carbon monoxide poisoning. The head x-ray involved moving my head in ways that the whiplash I had given myself did not really allow for, and now my arm hurt from the tetanus shot.
The doctor came back with the results of the carboxyhemoglobin test, oxygen in tow. I was too stunned to remember the number, but it was apparently rather high, particularly since I'd been sitting in the hospital for several hours before the test. It was so high, in fact, that my discharge instructions were not to re-enter my house until it was cleared by PG&E.
We returned home around 8am, and called PG&E. They assured me this was a top priority and a technician would be right out. We sat in the back yard, and made cautious forays into the house to get food. 4 hours of sitting in my bad yard later, I called again, and was assured that a technician would be out before 5pm. At 5 I called, and was told that the request had been given an all schedule, which meant that it could be until 8pm before the anyone showed up. I questioned their concept of top priority and reiterated that I was stuck outside my house with a broken nose and a closed head injury. She relented and a technician was dispatched within the hour.
The technician probe every orifice of our furnace and checked every nook of the house. There was no carbon monoxide, not surprisingly, since 15 hours had passed, but alarmingly, there was no CO source. The high winds must have drawn in CO from somewhere else, one of our neighbors, meaning there was little I could do to correct the problem but lick my wounds and spring for a better carbon monoxide tester.
The broken nose is healing fine, since I guess I fell down so straight the break was cleanly symmetrical. The whiplash has subsided, probably thanks to megadoses of Motrin. The rugburn on my face is still pretty prominent, however, and my coworkers are compelled to ask what happened to me. But I guess I'm probably lucky to be alive, and that I woke up when I did and brained myself, or I might have just gone off without a fight.