You know that awkward moment when you wake up on an airplane choking on some lumpy stuff in your mouth and throat and you hear your wife screaming your name and you open your eyes and see that you’re covered in vomit and you have no idea what just happened? I hate that.

Pam and I were flying back from a successful dance camp in Las Vegas. We both felt fine but a little tired after 4 days of dance lessons.
About 30 minutes into the flight, I started feeling a bit wobbly. I went and powdered my nose and hoped that that was the end of it.
After 10 more minutes, I was feeling wobbly again. I also was working up a cold sweat. I reached up and turned on the fan thingy that airplanes put above your head. I leaned my head back to feel the air on my face. Now I felt cold and sweaty and wobbly. I closed my eyes to see if I could sleep thru this.
This is where the first paragraph came from.

Pam tells me that I was shaking and choking and puking for about 30 seconds before I started responding. Apparantly, Pam didn’t like this. Folks were asking me my name and where I was to figure out if my brain was working. I knew the answers but I was weak as a kitten so I answered in sort of slow motion.

Luckily, there was doctor and 2 nurses on board. I never learned their names. They started an IV, checked my blood sugar, lay me down across the seats, raised my feet and checked my vitals. I seemed to be ok except for an irregular pulse. There was some discussion about whether to continue to Minneapolis or to divert the flight to Denver. The doctor recommended that we continue to Minneapolis since I’d seemed to have stabilized.

Getting me to lie down was more difficult than it sounds. I was in the middle of 3 seats. Pam was in the window seat. They didn’t want me to move and they didn’t want Pam to climb over me. The solution was to chase out the people in the row behind us and then have Pam climb over her seat into that row.

I was still pretty weak when we got to Minneapolis. I was also getting colder as time passed. Pam was pretty worried about this since I’m usually a lot warmer than Pam. I was carted off the plane to the paramedics by the fire department.
While they were pretty efficient at getting me off the plane to the ambulance, they forgot about Pam. After I was off the plane, the other passengers were free to get their carry-on stuff which blocked Pam from leaving the plane. Pam was able to get past the passengers when she explained who she was but this all took a while. When Pam got off the plane, no one knew about any paramedics or sick passengers.

At the same time, I was in the ambulance answering more questions and getting colder. At one point someone thought to ask if I was traveling with anyone. I told him about Pam and he went to get her. By this time, Pam had found someone to help her find the paramedics. They found the man who was looking for Pam and loaded her into the front of the ambulance.
I was told that there were 6 hospitals within a 5 mile radius and asked which one to go to. I know nothing about Minneapolis hospitals and said so. Since they suspected thar the problem may have been with my ticker, they took me to Abbott.

By the time that we got to Abbott, I was asking for more blankets. I was asked the same questions several times. I got a CT scan and some x-rays. By then, I was under 6 blankets and shivering uncontrollably. They admitted me and sent me to the neurology ward.

Once upstairs, I was sweating profusely and tossed off the blankets. Now I had a fever. More tests. The new theory was that while they still didn’t know what made me pass out and throw up, they were pretty sure that I must have inhaled some of the vomit. This was causing an infection in my lungs and causing the fever. They’re giving me antibiotics for this and suspect that I’ll be released on Monday.
Pam spent the night in the hospital room on a couch. Today, she’s looking for a hotel for tonight so that she can get cleaned up.

At this point it seems doubtful that they’ll figure out what caused the passing out and vomiting. They do seem pretty confident that they can clear out the lung infection.

Addendum
After 2 days of tests they never did figure out what in heck happened to me but they discharged me and let me go home. I took antibiotics for a few more days to get rid of the pneumonia.
I was OK on Tuesday but by Wednesday afternoon, I had to leave work to get some rest.
I let Pam know that I was going home and about an hour later, Corwin showed up to babysit. I was too tired to argue.

By the weekend, I was fine.