My Halloween Horror

Imagine this: You wake up in the middle of the night, as you do far too many nights, to go to the bathroom. One second you're sitting on the can, thinking about nothing in particular. You begin to cough.

The next thing you know, you're on your hands and knees on the bathroom floor, surrounded by blood. There's blood on your clothes, blood running off your hands and down your arms, blood dripping off your chin. What the blazes is going on here? you think. Suddenly, you realize the blood you're immersed in is yours!

You clamber to your feet, look in the bathroom mirror and discover there's a huge gash above your right eye – and you have no idea how it got there!

Sounds like the beginning of some hackneyed Halloween fiction, right? Well, it actually became fact for me in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, necessitating an overnight stay for observation in St. Mary's Hospital in Decatur, Ill.

What we now believe happened is, I blacked out while seated on the toilet, pitched forward and bounced my head off the corner of the bathroom sink – missing my right eye by no more than an inch – then came to on the floor. For someone who's never passed out before in his life, and coming on the heels of Saturday's terrifying out-of-body experience (see "Death," Oct. 26), I was quite frankly scared a-plenty.

                     Me in St. Mary's Hospital, Decatur, Ill.

    The offending gash – superglued, not stitched! Ain't science sumthin'?

Of course, nothing similar occurred Tuesday night in the hospital. Karen, who spent the night with me, watched over me like a loving mother hen and insisted on walking me to the restroom anytime I had to go, and besides, you know whatever's wrong with you instantly feels better when the doctor's around. Except for the swollen right eye (that's something to see, isn't it?), a stiff neck and bruised knees, I feel pretty fine, everything considered.

Here's the best thinking now about why this happened: I've had a horrible cough for more than a week, but when I begin coughing uncontrollably (which happened in the bathroom Tuesday) the oxygen literally cuts off to my brain for a moment and causes me to black out. Or, the medication prescribed to help ease my coughing spells, Benzonatate, has dizziness as one of its possible side effects. Or a combination of the two. The doctors don't believe I have whooping cough (which would make me feel about 95 years old), but they have decided to treat my condition as if it is, because my symptoms are similar.

Whatever, as I check out of St. Mary's today, I can't help but think about how much differently this incident might have played out if I still lived alone, and to be soooo grateful for my new family: a wife who cares passionately, a father-in-law willing to be awakened from a sound sleep at 5 a.m. to drive to the hospital, and a mother-in-law willing to get on her hands and knees and clean up the bloody bathroom after we departed.

My mother-in-law, Linda, said yesterday, "Things like this are the reason we are supposed to be living together." I think she's very wise.