I Almost Died.

So, I almost died Monday night. Not in the “I laughed so hard I almost died” way, or the “OMG, my fart smelled so bad I almost died” way. In the “my heart almost stopped beating and I turned purple” way. There was an issue with carbon monoxide at my job, and I took the brunt of it head on. At one point, during the night, I started feeling light headed, and a little fatigued. My thoughts then were I hadn’t had anything to eat in almost 8 hours and had been working hard for most of those hours. I was finished with my work, and was starting to bring all my equipment back to the van that was in the loading dock. Each trip I took out there, I’d come back in feeling more and more light headed and fatigued. I drank a glass of water a couple of times, and it made me feel better, and that just reinforced my thought that I was feeling that way just out of sheer hunger. The last task I had to do was roll up the 300+ feet of hose onto the storage wheel in the back of the van. As I was doing so, everything started getting worse and worse. My heart was beating ungodly fast. My arms felt fatigued like I had just done a crap load of curls in the gym. My vision was getting blurry. I stopped rolling the hose for a while trying to catch my breath and slow down my heart. Now, I was doing this job alone, but there were two people “watching” me as this was in a high-security building and they had to be in the same room as me the whole night. At this time I was at the back of my work van, they were at the opposite end of the loading dock. I started trying to roll up more hose, and the dizziness, the lightheaded feeling, my heart racing so damn fast, all my limbs going numb, my vision going blurry. I realized that I was going to black out, and turned to start walking to the door, thinking some fresh air would help (again, I was still thinking this was all hunger related, little did I know how much I really really needed that fresh air). But as I turned, I realized there was no way I could walk that far. I was that weak, that dizzy, that close to blacking out. I turned the other way, thinking I could walk to the other side of the van and get the attention of the other two guys. Everything was shutting down so fast on me at this point. I was slipping under so fast. There was nothing I could do except completely understand how fast I was slipping. Everything was going dark. It was literally the scariest feeling I have ever had in my life. I managed to yell out one of the names of the other two guys. They both came over. I could only make out the shadow figure of one of them coming around the van, even though it was a situation I should have seen him clearly. I don’t remember anything after that. By the time the 2nd guy came around, he said I was purple, and my eyes were rolling back in my head. I was still standing somehow. The first guy sat me down on the back of the van. The 2nd guy got me back on my feet and started slapping my chest to get me going. They got me outside and that is when I “came too” again. We were right across the street from the hospital, so after I got some of my strength back we walked over there, and that is when the other two realized they were lightheaded and dizzy too. I know, probably should have called 911, but we were all a wee bit messed up at this point. The hospital got me back to a bed right away. Got me on some oxygen. Drew some blood to test it for how much carbon monoxide I had taken in and other tests. Gave me an EKG. When they drew the blood, it was probably 90-minutes after I blacked out and turned purple. When they gave me the results, they told me a normal person has a CO rating of 2-4 in their blood. A smoker has around 11-14. I was at 23. TWENTY THREE!!! They upped the oxygen, and kept me around for a few more hours before doing another blood test. They were debating putting me in a hyperbolic chamber, and some other measures to get me back to normal. At 3 AM my level had dropped down to 6. I was cleared to go home. And home is where I am sitting right now, lucky to be here. Lucky to feel zero effects of the day. If I hadn’t managed to call out to the guys that were watching me, there is no way I’d be sitting here typing this. I’d be dead. If my company had their crap together, they would have called in ahead of time that I would be there, and those two guys wouldn’t have been there TO come save me as I would have been cleared to be there alone. It all happened so fast. I still have no recollection of the one guy slapping my chest, or how they got me outside. I’m just so very thankful that I am still here with all of you, because it very easily could have turned out much much different. I am alive.