Near Death Experience

After my first semester at college I came home and met up with my high school friends. Went to a party on New Years Eve and got very drunk. I did some things that I may never live down. I had a hangover that lasted nearly a week.

This experience should have told me to be careful with alcohol. It did not.

My school had a winter semester. It was one month long. The college that I went to was about five miles out of town and in the middle of a corn field. You drive by a bunch of farms and then there is a college surrounded by cornfields. One friday it snowed and classes were cancelled for the day. I lived on campus but there was enough commuters to cancell the classes.

So to celebrate a friend and I got a bottle of liquor. We drank it one shot glass at a time. We didn't quite finish the bottle but we were pretty close. Then we went to a fraternity house to drink more. After that I don't remember. I was taken back to my room. I woke up with my sheets and clothing covered in vomit.

I stayed in my room the rest of the weekend. I couldn't eat. I would drink a little water and then puke it up into a bucket. I remember walking to the bathroom to urinate which was maybe 20 paces away from my room. I put my hand on the wall and I could feel my own heartbeat and I was having trouble breathing.

Monday I didn't go to class. My roommate came back from class saw that I didn't go and that I wasn't getting any better. He took me to the nurse. It was just a short walk from our room to where the nurse was but I needed all the help I could get from him to get there. Soon after I was inspected by the nurse I was taken to the emergency room via ambulance.

I spent five days in the hospital. It turned out that even though I was throwing up everything that I put into my mouth. My blood sugar was still high. My blood sugar reading was 1200. By the way a norml reading is between 80 and 120. My pulse rate was 200. And my blood pressure was extremely low. I went to the nurse without a minute to spare.

Missing a week of class during the winter term was equal to missing a month in a regular semester. I did a couple of things to make it up and I think the professor took it easy on me. He gave me a D in the class.

I had bad heartburn for at least a month after the experience. Swallowing was extremely painful.

This experience definitely should have told me to be more careful with alcohol. It did not.