Hi My Name is Katie, I Am Paranoid

last night was the biggest brouhaha to hit our house since move-in day, and it all started because i felt weird.

let me preface the whole thing by saying that i have a cold, haven't been feeling super great, and spent most of yesterday lounging around in bed. after an entire afternoon of being a blob, i was feeling lightheaded, with a mild headache and kind of dizzy. i hadn't had much to drink, so i could've been dehydrated, but my mind sort of naturally went straight to carbon monoxide. because that is the first logical response to feeling weird, right?

so when my roommate nikki got home i asked her to let me know if she started feeling strange, so i would know if i were crazy or not. she remarked that, oddly enough, after hanging out at home for a while the previous day, she had started feeling strange. feeding off of each other and the reverend yelling at me to go get a detector, nikki and i went out in the ice storm to get a carbon monoxide alarm.

bring it back, open it up and put the batteries in, and not 2 minutes later it goes off. red light flashing, screaming at us to seek fresh air. we run around in circles in a lightheaded (in my case) panic, nikki putting the cats into a carrier as we go to the other apartments in the house to let them know. lo and behold we come to discover that carbon monoxide has been a problem in this house before. awesome. we go outside on the front porch in freezing rain and 30 degree temperatures, call the fire department and our parents, and wait. the fire truck roars up with lights blaring just a couple of minutes later, and the guys go in with their little CO detector doohickey. then i find out that an ambulance is on the way for me, as i'm the one with the symptoms. the firefighters go all through the house and find zero ppm carbon monoxide. good ending, except here i am, drama queen, with the poor paramedics rushing in to help me for something that is apparently all in my head.

i refused assistance, they left after filling out some paperwork, and i laid down to relax from the carbon monoxide symptoms i had apparently inflicted upon myself. it was then that i realized that i had taken two swigs of delsym cough syrup earlier in the day, from a bottle that is over a year old and probably has distilled itself to a higher potency. it left me feeling so woozy and dizzy that i slept until 3:30 pm today. most dramatic night in a while, all for nothing. but better safe than sorry!