Saturday, January 7, 2012

I'm Great Under Pressure

I've had an interesting past couple of days.

Wednesday night I threw a pizza in to the oven as I was showering after my run because I was capital S-Starving.  When the timer went off, I went to check the pizza and to set the oven temp on broil, when I realized that a small piece of wax paper had may its way in to the oven (I'm guessing it got stuck to the bottom of the pizza pan) and was burning nicely in the bottom of it.  Cue Jeri being struck with fear and panic as her top three fears include:  fire, flying, and lightning.  However, when confronted with catastrophic events, I am always very very calm and level headed, and this time was no different (must be all the practice I have during my dreams when I'm being chased, etc. and have to outsmart the bad guys to get away, thanks anxiety, you're a real peach!).  I grabbed a pot holder to shield my hand, and swiped at the paper to remove it from the oven.  Most of it came off in the pot holder and engulfed that in to flames...yes, in my hand, and the remainder went up in flames and quickly turned to soot.  I attempted to smother the flame without burning myself, and thankfully I was successful.  I'm guessing our burn nurses aren't nearly as cute as Susan, so I could go without visiting them, thankyouvermuch.

As soon as I was out of crises way, I had a delightful little panic attack where I couldn't breathe for a couple of minutes.  Thank God it was AFTER I was out of harms way and not upon seeing the flames, because... that could've been bad.

Moving on to Thursday night, Kyle had been complaining all day of an ear ache and head ache, and I thought he was just using them as an excuse to get out of running with me.  But he ended up running with me, so I didn't think too much of it.  Until he woke up in the middle of the night and said that his ear was all crusty.  Gross.  Then from the bathroom I hear, "Uh... apparently I'm bleeding..."  Since he was acting calm I didn't think too much of it, until he came back to the bedroom and looked at the pillow.  My pillow, that was now covered in blood.  Now I'm not a doctor, but I think that anytime you're bleeding out of YOUR FREAKIN' HEAD it's probably not a good thing.

I start asking him how he's feeling, if his ear hurts, if he's dizzy, etc.  And then go to town on google.  Most of the results show that it's likely an infection or a ruptured ear drum that are causing the bleeding, and typically antibiotics are prescribed.  Being the giant hypochondriac that I am, I ignore the postings that talk about tumors, and don't relay that information to Kyle.  He goes back to sleep after promising that he'll go to acute care as soon as they open in the morning.  Me, certain that he's going to fall asleep and never wake up, spends the rest of the night laying in bed with one hand on him making sure he's still breathing.

Luckily, it wasn't anything major and my diagnosis was fairly correct (remind me again why I didn't continue on the doctoral path.... oh yeah... biology suckkkkkked), and I had further proof that I'm great undah presshah!  (please sing that last line for correct effect.)

And now today I have my long run that I'm doing a stellar job of avoiding.  But if someone is having issues on the bike trail, I'll be prepared to take charge of the situation, and then immediately sink in to a pile of non-functioning goo once the issue is fixed.  Neat.

Edited to add:  Naturally this is only referring to emergency situations.  When it comes to racing/running, or hell any sporting events at all I tend to crumble under pressure.  Just so we have things clear on that front. ;)

No comments: