JamesSlusher.com

I didn’t win a bracelet, so now I have to go back and build tires.

Sigh.

Monday night at work I got some money out of the ATM and wanted some change. I had eaten the “lunch” (in quotations cause it was 11 p.m.) that I had brought but I thought that maybe I could get some dessert in the cafeteria and get some change. Two birds thing, ya dig?

I walk into the cafeteria and the first thing I see are these scrumptious looking brownies. They look exactly like the brownies that Marilyn cooks and, man, are those some delicious brownies. I pick one up and head to the cashier.

Just so happens that the cashier is eating one as I get up there.

“There aren’t any nuts in these, are there?”

She shakes her head no. I pay my little dollar, get my change and sit down to enjoy this delightful looking brownie.

I take a bite and think, hmm, this has an odd texture. I swallow the morsel just as I realize that the brownie didn’t have an odd texture. It was my tongue. It was already starting to swell from the layer of peanut butter in the middle of the brownie.

Ahhh, nuts.

I’m not just a little allergic to peanuts. I’m violently allergic to them. Always have been.

I spit out what I can, head immediately to the bathroom to wash my mouth out and spit out anything remaining. I then go straight to my crew leader to tell him that I was in trouble and needed medical attention.

I head down to medical and talk the security guard into giving me some Benadryl to suppress the histamine reaction. He looked at me a little askance because I think he believed that it was just for sinus problems. Doesn’t matter, though, he gave it to me.

We discussed sending me to the ER and I was thinking that I could tough it out. Five or ten minutes later, my tongue had gone back down and I felt bad, but not imperiled. The security guard and my crew leader talked me into chilling out a bit longer just to see. About 10 minutes after that, I started wheezing and coughing and my nose started running. I changed my mind at that point and told them that I should probably go to the ER.

Ben, a crew leader from Curing, drove me to the ER and I was admitted promptly.

They put an IV into my arm without an actual IV. It was just the thing the IV attaches to.

Then they forgot all about me. I sat there, thinking that someone was gonna be right there. For an hour. At that point my breathing had gotten to a whistling wheeze and I felt a little light-headed. I got up and walked to the nurses station and informed one of them that I was having a hard time breathing.

Things happened quick after that. A doctor saw me about a minute later, and another minute after that the nurse comes into the room with several syringe things that fit into the IV hookup they had implanted in me.

She told me what each one was before she shot them into my IV, but really all I heard was the first and part of the second. Benadryl was the first one (HA, I knew I was right about that) and the second was a steriod. “Steroid” was the only word I heard because my head was already spinning. My breathing became easier instantly.

Have you ever gotten so drunk that when you laid down on the bed and closed your eyes the world seemed like it was spinning? Try that sober. With your eyes open.

The nurse sat me up all the way and I immediately clutched my stomach.

“Are you feeling sick?”

All I could do was nod. If I had unclenched my jaw, it would’ve been all over.

She rushed out of the room and came back quickly with one of those little pink plastic trays they use for everything in hospitals. I unclenched my jaw.

I threw up everything. Repeatedly. I threw up my knees.

Since work had begun that night, I had eaten 2 pickled sausages that I had bought from the gas station, 2 hot dogs, some potato chips, a peach, plenty of Diet Mountain Dew, a small bite of brownie and a half dozen cinnamon breath mints. Most of it was still there. Man, what a smell.

The nurse kept repeating, “I’m sorry”, over and over again. I guess for being a party to my regurgitation. All I could think was “Thank you”, over and over again. I could breathe. Between heaves, of course, but breathing nonetheless. And puke breath is better than no breath at all, I say.

The next couple of hours were very boring in comparison to that. I passed in and out of consciousness as the chemical combo they shot in me had my head wrong but, again, my breathing right.

Ben came and picked me back up and got me back to the plant at about 6 a.m. My shift doesn’t end until 7:15 a.m., so I went back to my machine for the last hour. Heck with it, why not? I needed some more time for the shakes to go away before I got on the road.

I call my lovely wife and tell her the story on the way home and get to the house grateful that the night is finally over.

As I’m getting ready for bed I take all the little bits of paper and releases and whatnot that I got from the hospital and look over them. I find the one that has the post-discharge instructions on it, guess what it says.

“Stay away from peanuts”.

Thanks, Doc. Wish I had thought of that.

I’m not, shall we say, all that enthusiastic about my job.  I’ve been off since June 26th and I have to go back to work tomorrow.

Ick.

I’ve only got 13 hours of tire building to go.

I think I can, I think I can.

Have I ever told y’all how much I love my job?

Yeah, well, there is a reason for that.

An ongoing series in which you don’t have to be stupid, because I’ve done it for you.

I work alot of nightshifts. Half of all my regularly scheduled shifts are nightshifts and all the overtime I work nowadays is nightshift.

I mentioned to my doctor once about how tired and sleepy I get when on the nightshift. He told me that they have this great new drug called Provigil that helps with Shift Work Sleep Disorder (SWSD, who knew they had named such a thing?). It’s not a stimulant, he told me. It just helps you maintain a normal wakeful alertness. He guaranteed that it wasn’t habit-forming or anything and by that time I was losing interest in the whole thing.

I got the prescription from him anyway and gave it a whirl.

Pretty unspectacular results. Still sleepy, still nodding off. Pretty expensive drug for having about the same effect that a Starburst would, without the burst of fruit flavor.

So yesterday I didn’t sleep much during the day. I think to myself: “Self, what can you do about your sleep deprivation?” Then it hit me: take two Provigil tablets.

It’s probably not that the drug is useless, it’s that I’m taking the wrong dose. At least that’s what I told myself. So I pop 2 of them bad boys at about 4:30 P.M.

By 9 o’clock my heart is pounding, I’m flushed, nervous and I want to puke. Essentially I feel like one of the last 2 Miss America pageant contestants and Bert Parks is taking his ever-loving time.

I never did puke, the agitation died down and I didn’t get the vapors or anything. But it is 10 A.M. the next morning and I’m still wide awake.

So now I’ve got this expensive bottle of non-stimulants (HA) that don’t work when you take the prescribed dose and do horrid things to you when you take more than that. I’m considering dropping the whole bottle in the trash right now.

I should just learn to drink coffee.

So they recently began scaling back the available overtime at my job. Which was cool with me because I had 168 hours on my last paycheck. I get paid every two weeks, you do the math.

So this 7 day break was going to be the first full one I had taken in, umm, I don’t know. Months and months.

Then I got a call this morning asking me if I wanted to work tonight.

I don’t really want to, but there is a certain amount of politics involved in this. When OT gets tight, the crewleaders get to choose who they want to call and who they don’t. Being available when they need you makes you more likely to get the next call.

So in I go.

Man, have 10 days really gone by since my last post? Unbelievable. My life has become this haze of work, sleep, play with the kids for 10 minutes, talk to my wife for 5, work, sleep, work.

It sucks.

Marilyn has put her foot down as far as me working any more OT. I’m allowed to work Thursday nights on my seven off (I’ve already signed up for the rest of the year), but that’s it. I can’t say I’m actually upset about it. I was kind of hoping she would save me from myself. Once you get into the habit of saying “yes” everytime a crew leader asks you if you want to work, it just gets easier and easier to agree to it. It doesn’t get any easier to work it, just the opposite. But I’m worn out now and I need some down time.

And I miss my family sumfin’ turrible.

And I miss you guys, too. I used to be connected. I used to chat with people and have an “online life” which has netted me some great friends and helped me keep in touch with the old ones. And I miss podcasting, too. These are all situations I need to rectify. These are all situations I am going to rectify. Just let me rest up a bit. After I string together a couple of days of rest, I will begin putting my online house back in order.

When you have a glorious and fabulous life like I do, with a beautiful family, a did-it-ourselves house, and a 1979 F100, you gotta share it, no?

If you are like me and have to wear a uniform to work, there is a quick way to tell if you are working too much overtime. When you gather up your clothes to do a load of laundry from the past week and realize that only one shirt was not a part of a work uniform, you have been working too much.

Thing is, I will probably have many more loads of laundry like this over the next month.

A buddy of mine from work quit last night so that he could go open up his own construction company.

I’m so jealous I could chew my own tongue off.

His name is Nick Tindall and he is a helluva hard worker. There were many times when he would work a night shift, go put up a fence for someone, take a nap and go back in to work that night. If you need any work done in the CSRA shoot me an email and I will give you his phone number.

I will use him if we ever have any stuff that needs done around here. Like that new shed I’ve been wanting…

I wish Nick the best of luck, though with skills like his you don’t need much luck. He will be working for himself doing something he loves doing. I can’t imagine a better life.