Most Exciting Anniversary Weekend Ever
Posted on August 14, 2011 by Ching under Life.
Every anniversary is memorable in its own way. This weekend is definitely going to go down in history as the most exciting anniversary weekend ever. Just to give you an idea of how Brian and I typically celebrate our wedding anniversaries, here’s a brief recap of the last 8 years of celebrations…
2003: We went to dinner at Red Rock, followed by dancing at Copa Cabana and America’s Pub.
2004: Couples massage at Healing Waters and weekend at Country Club Plaza in Kansas City.
2005: Most of our third anniversary was spent at the Historic Campbell Castle. We stayed in The Royal Court, the inn’s best room, for two nights. There may or may not have been a sex tape as a result of this weekend. 😉 Just kidding! We also got a couples massage at Healing Waters, our then favorite spa.
2006: We celebrated by going to Harrah’s NKC. We both played in a poker tournament. Brian took second place and won $400+ dollars.
2007: This was a big one because it was our fifth wedding anniversary. We wanted to do something special, but we couldn’t celebrate in August because I was in grad school and I didn’t want to miss classes or be unprepared for the start of the semester. We ended up celebrating a month early. We spent seven days at an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica and met some really cool people. For our actual anniversary weekend, we went to the drive-in. It was my first time.
2008: Our anniversary was sandwiched between a trip to Vegas for Cory and April’s wedding and then the WPT APL poker cruise so we pretty much just laid low. Brian got a new lawnmower.
2009: Couples massage at Serenity, Midwest Rockfest, Tanganyika. Nothing major since we had our trip to the Philippines coming up and we were focused on that.
2010: Dinner at Bonefish and dancing at Suede. We celebrated early because we had Logan stay with us during our actual anniversary weekend. I think this was the catalyst for our Friday night salsa ritual. We also went to see the Rush Time Machine Tour last August.
Fast forward to this year… Brian and I started off the anniversary weekend by attending a two-day investing seminar by TD Ameritrade. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe because we are uber nerdy. LOL.
After day one of the seminar, I took him to dinner at Walt’s Sports Bar & Grill (on Central and Rock) for the sake of nostalgia. Then we went to play poker at Nilla’s. I did better this time than the first time, but I got knocked out of the tournament with three tables still remaining by A6. It was really stupid. I was mad, but I didn’t act out. I just smiled and got up from the table. At least I didn’t do it to myself this time.
I was short-stacked already and only had five big blinds left by the time the big blind came around to me. Blinds were $500-$1000. It was folded around to a big stack who was right before the button. He raised to $3200. I honestly think he was just being a chip bully and with me being female and short-stacked, he probably thought he could just pick up my big blind and then move on to the next hand. I looked down at QQ. Naturally, I went all in with my remaining $4K. It was only $1800 more for him to call so he called with his lame A6 hand, of course. Alissa was dealing. I managed to dodge the A on the flop, but it came on the turn and I was knocked out of the tourney. Just like that. Oh, well. That’s poker.
After getting knocked out of the poker tourney, Jenni, Brian and I decided to go to Crossroads (a biker bar on the South side of town) to watch Skrapyard perform. Jenni had never heard them play before. We got there before they started playing. Skrapyard was awesome as always. Jenni got to meet Charles Withers, the keyboard player, and also JW for the first time.
Jenni bought me a drink and we played a game of pool. I couldn’t drink anymore though, because I had a few earlier in the evening already. That, and we couldn’t stay too late because we wanted to be at Century II by 7:30 am again for day two of the financial seminar. We wanted to stick around for a bit, but ended up leaving after the first set.
We got up a little later on Saturday morning than we did the day before. We wanted to be there by 7:30 am, but didn’t actually leave the house until then. Luckily, there was still plenty of parking by the time we got to Century II. The line for the one-on-ones was really long though, so we decided to forgo it altogether. Brian and I agreed that we are comfortable with the knowledge we’ve gained so far and didn’t want to sign up for additional workshops. Besides that, we couldn’t really move our 401Ks to TD Ameritrade but at least we can mitigate some of our risk with the knowledge we now have. The only thing that we’d possibly move over is Brian’s Roth IRA that we set up at Intrust Bank three years ago. We are getting older, but we are pretty young relative to the average age of the other seminar attendees so I really didn’t feel the same sense of urgency that everyone else did. We’ll continue to contribute as much as we can to our respective 401Ks and try to manage our assets better. The idea is to work smarter, not harder. Make your money work for you, or so they say.
The financial seminar was really helpful and informative but, by noon on the second day, we were pretty much checked out. I was looking forward to our anniversary dinner.
Brian made our dinner reservations at YaYa’s Euro Bisto at Bradley Fair. The weather was perfect so we decided to eat outside on their patio. It worked out great because they had live jazz that night.
Dinner was great. The food was delicious and our server Ben was awesome.
Brian had a couple of beers and I had a couple of cocktails, which were very yummy.
We shared the creme brulee trio for dessert. Brian really liked it.
The excitement happened after dessert. We were finishing our drinks and enjoying the wonderful weather and music while waiting for our check. Ben came with the bill. Everything looked good so Brian put the credit card in the folder and Ben picked it up. While we were waiting for him to come back, I started to feel queasy. I thought it was because I had eaten too much. “Am I becoming bulimic?” I wondered because I felt like puking my dinner out. I asked Brian where the restrooms were, but I never made it.
He said as I got up and put my hands on the arm rest of the chair, my eyes rolled to the back of my head and I started to have some kind of seizure. Instinctively, he put one hand on my head and the other at he bottom of my jaw to prevent me from biting my cheeks and tongue. He didn’t want me to hurt myself. All the while he was asking me what was happening. The first thing I noticed when I came to was him on top of me.
I don’t remember much. I was kind of sleepy from the long day and the pasta that I had consumed probably didn’t help much. I thought that I had fallen asleep and was dreaming. I had felt my legs moving when regained consciousness. It felt like I was biking. I think I asked Brian if I looked like I was biking and he told me it didn’t look like that at all. He said I was spazzing out and looked like I was having a seizure and he was really scared.
We were going to take a walk around the pond/lake after dinner, but I told him that I didn’t feel good and wanted to go home instead. I don’t remember passing out but, the next thing I know, I was on the ground and I had all of these faces over me. Brian said that I fainted when I got up from the table. He said I didn’t even get seven feet away. I told him that I didn’t feel like I fell down. He said it was because he was walking right behind me and caught me as I fainted. He gently laid me on the ground to maker sure I didn’t hurt myself.
As I mentioned earlier, I don’t remember passing out. I just remember all of these people around me trying to help. One woman said to put me on my side so that if I got sick, I wouldn’t get sick all over myself. Everything was dark and blurry when the queasy feeling came back. They decided to move me to the front of the restaurant away from all of the diners. There was a couple sitting on the bench out front and this nurse who was helping Brian and me asked them if they could leave so that we could use the bench. They lay me on the bench with my head on her lap, which was very comfortable by the way. Immediately I started to feel better. She told Brian to elevate my legs to help my circulation. I think it helped a lot because the darkness went away and my vision cleared. I started to feel like myself again and that overfull feeling I had even went away. I told Brian that I was feeling better and probably could just go home, but one of the servers already called 911.
When the EMT arrived, they looked me over and took my blood pressure. Even though I felt a lot better, my blood pressure was still a very low 80/50. The nurse told the EMT that she had difficulty finding my pulse at first. The EMT asked me if I was pregnant, which was probably the umpteenth time I was asked that question in the last five minutes. I guess pregnant women are prone to fainting. I really just wanted to go home, but the nurse encouraged us to go to the ER so I could get thoroughly checked out. Brian agreed. I think he was just very worried about me. He didn’t want to bring me home, only to find me dead the next day, and then have to answer to everyone.
So I got in the ambulance and Brian followed behind in the car. That was the start of an interesting evening. I wasn’t really terrified when I fainted because I didn’t know what was going on. I was more scared when I got in the ambulance and they told me that they were going to start an IV. I hate needles!
The ambulance took me to Kansas Medical Center in Andover. We figured that there would be less wait there. I’d never been there before and it’s actually a really nice facility. When we got there, they asked me again, several times, if I was pregnant. They also asked me several other questions, including asking about my family medical history, but the question about pregnancy was most memorable because it was asked several times and it was one that Brian and I found most absurd. After the saline was gone from the IV, they capped it. The nurse tried to draw blood from the IV so that he wouldn’t have to poke me again, but the blood started to clot. He didn’t have a choice but to draw blood from my other arm. He was really good though, and it only stung a little.
After collecting my blood, they also wanted a urine sample. After running some tests, which all came back normal, they told me that I wasn’t pregnant. We already knew that, though. =P I’m healthier than I’ve ever been, so this was truly baffling. Dr. Davis came back and asked me more questions and decided it might be best to do a CT scan — just to make sure there was no head trauma or bleeding. They did another scan with contrast to check my thyroid, which is prone to getting enlarged every now and then.
The second CT scan involved getting saline and iodine pumped into me via IV. The iodine felt really weird. I felt it going in me and made me feel warm all over. It also gave me a metallic taste in my mouth. A lot of time passed while we waited for test results. The first three hours went by pretty quickly, but by midnight I was starting to run out of gas and just wanted to go home and go to bed. It was almost 2:00 am by the time we were released to go home. Dr. Davis recommended a follow up visit with our primary care physician this week. I think Brian is going to shoot for Friday.
Brian and I didn’t end up going to the movies last night, for obvious reasons. I experienced a lot of firsts, though. Firsts are always fun. I had my first ambulance ride and my first IV and my first CT scan. We certainly didn’t expect to spend the night of our anniversary celebration at the ER, but we made the best of it. The only thing that really bugged me was the hole in my hand for the IV. When the doctor was running some tests, she held each hand and asked me to pull and push. I told her I couldn’t because it hurt. “Where does it hurt?” she asked all worried. “In my hand where the IV needle is poking me,” I replied. Ooops. We all started laughing.
After all was said and done, the only conclusion that the doctor came up with was that I had postprandial hypotension. I always thought that my naturally low blood pressure was a good thing, but I guess when something makes it drop even lower it can cause problems. In this case it triggered a vasovagal response, which caused me to have a seizure or what looked like one. After the seizure-like episode, standing up from my chair caused me to pass out again.
I figured it was nothing serious and probably just need to go home and rest. Brian was calm during the whole ordeal (the nurse lady who was helping us actually complimented him for being so level-headed), but he said he was freaking out inside. He immediately called his parents and my parents before the EMT even arrived. I think it freaked them, and everyone else, out.
My dad was familiar with this type of thing because he knew about it from our family friend Dr. Albarracin. I guess he remembered Tito Alan describing something like this and figured I was going to be okay. My mom, who knows me best, figured I would just laugh it off the next day and posted something to that effect on my Facebook wall. Brian tends to be overly protective so he wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything serious. I’m sure he feels better knowing that I’ve been thoroughly looked over. At least now we know what to do next time something like this happens.
This will definitely go down in history as the most exciting anniversary weekend ever. Looking forward to what’s in store for us next year! 🙂
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Jo on August 15, 2011
Now we know one very good reason not to over indulge when it comes to food. Pasta to be very specific 🙂
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Brian on August 14, 2011
I Hope our 10 year is much calmer.