Miscellaneous

So, let's say there's this place in the Pearl that I eat lunch at frequently - say once or twice a week.  Say, also, that there is a high nut percentage on the menu, so that I always play it safe and order the same thing - Caesar salad with cajun chicken. (Because I am deathly allergic to nuts, emphasis on the "deathly.")

So I grab today's NYTimes and head over to this place.  I order the usual and sit down with the paper.  The salad (eventually) comes, and I start to eat. 

About ten bites in, something is wrong.  Maybe it's my imagination, I think hopefully.  A few more bites, and I realize what's happening - my mouth is itching.  Badly.  Remember that nut allergy?

Number one, I am PISSED.  I am extremely careful about avoiding nuts, and always find the safest things on the menu.  I'd eaten this dish at this place dozens of times.   If I was exposed a nut, it was because someone was careless.

I'm also pissed because this is the start of hours of fun - it always is.  I immediately put benedryl dissolving strips on my tongue, which, by the way, is vile.  I leave the rest of my salad (and benedryl wrappers) on the table and start to walk back to the office, because I will be damned if I call 911 at the cafe.  I definitely do NOT want to jab myself in the leg with epinephrine in public in the oh-so-trendy Pearl District.

At the office, I explain what's going on, and my coworker suggests the urgent care place five blocks over, and my coworker walks with me the distance.  (I put two more benedryl strips on my tongue to tide me over.)  At the urgent care place, I'm told it's not really an urgent care place.  Sure, they're open long hours 7 days a week, and their website and signage make it seem like they're urgent care, but it's really just a regular doctor's office...except that they take people all the time.  Whatever.  I am annoyed, but get to gawk at the Wieden + Kennedy trendsters coming back from lunch, so it's not a total loss. 

On the way back to the office, I am debating blowing off the entire thing and sucking it up, but Matthew and my coworker convince me not to; in the past, I've done this after taking a lot of benedryl, and it just delays the ultimate massive reaction and I still in end up in the urgent care/ER.  So Matthew makes an appointment for me at the not-so-urgent urgent care place for about twenty minutes in the future; it's confirmed when I'm back in the office.  Clients call.  A client comes in. I'm late, but not feeling guilty since I now have had to walk there twice.  I walk all the way back over to the not-urgent-care place, go into my appointment, and since I'm not in acute distress (the benedryl dosing), the doctor will just give me a script for prednisone and send me on my way (to avoid a later, delayed reaction, basically, my immune system will be out of commission for a couple of days).

The rest of the afternoon?  Passes in a blur, because I'm so groggy.  Hopefully I didn't sound TOO intoxicated - I'm counting my lucky stars that I wasn't due in court.  I am proud to say that I did manage to get a bunch of work done and I didn't resort to napping on the boss's couch. 

Hours later (6:30 hours later!) I am groggy.  And cranky.  And really, really ready for the end of the day.