A Strange Day

It's 2:30 and I've had enough of Monday already.

This morning I thought there was a hockey game on the radio, but instead the local sportsradio station had endless interviews with former Steve Nash coaches and friends & family. Fine, he's the first Canadian to win the NBA MVP. I get it. Sadly, I'm going to agree with Mark Cuban on this one: "Alright, we love Steve Nash... yadda yadda yadda."

Coincidentally, if you know anything about Mark Cuban, know this as well: He was my boss (from Hell!)'s idol and he talked about him all the time. That's enough about that, but it sure explains a lot.

So, aside from a lack of radio listenin' this morning, turns out I took 15 minutes to walk from my kitchen to the garage and was running really late. And you know the minute you're running late someone has to screw up the morning commute, right? The longest mile of the commute had 2 stalls and they were expecting long, long lines of cars trying to get around the stalled vehicles.

It wasn't actually that difficult and I even made it through the worst intersection in near-record time today. But then things totally slowed down on the freeway.

Anyone working with traffic laws in British Columbia, could you please make it a justifiable collision if the single occupant of the car ahead of you in the HOV lane is doing less than the speed limit? Pretty please???
I mean, really, what do you think all the honking and flashing of lights behind actually was? A parade perhaps?

Digressing... So, I'm in class and just a few minutes after we start, I hear a whimper from behind. One of the only women in the class is looking a little ill (a little pasty white) and her arms are shaking. I thought originally, she was just cold. But then her head started swaying and I thought she might be fainting.

You know it's a rough program when people work on projects for 24+ hours straight, so I thought maybe she'd just overdone it.

I asked her if she was okay and she turned and said "okay" while giving me the OK sign. But then I noticed she was still shaking and she could loosen her fingers from the 'OK.' A guy on the other side of her desk called the instructor's attention to what was happening and when he asked if everything was okay, she just repeated "okay." He went back to the lesson. I noticed that both hands were now formed into claws and she was still shaking a bit. Suddenly, she started to fall off her chair and I leaned forward just in time to catch her. The instructor saw this and I helped her lie down on the floor and shouted at the instructor to call for first aid. He ran out of the room to call and I just kept talking to her.

Eventually, the first aid attendants arrived and while I still wasn't sure if she was haivng a seizure or something else, I just held her on the floor and made her focus on my eyes. She shouldn't speak properly at this point either.

It turns out she was hypoglycemic and her blood sugar was incredibly low. She had been working overnight on her project and only ate a slice of toast for breakfast. I helped take her to the firemen who answered the 911 call and stuck around assisting while we waited for the paramedics to arrive. We got some apple juice in her and she started to perk up, but the firemen gave her a pack of glucosel, which is like a packet full of sugar rush. It helped her out, but when the paramedics arrived, they were pretty insistent on testing her blood sugar before releasing her back to class.

While I was gone, my instructor told the rest of the class that they're going to be the lucky ones if I'm in their development group for our final project at the endof the program in 2006. Why? Because I'm "a take-charge guy who has not problem giving orders to anyone." It turns out my instructor is a former US Marine and he told me later the last time he had a medical emergency was his foxhole buddy who'd been shot. He had a bit of a flashback --which really has to suck.

Anyway, she's fine but gave us a bit of a scare. I think she was worried that people might look at her funny, but I told her that everyone was just concerned with her, not about her.

Oh, and somehow I got my project done in class today too. Go figure.