I had a pretty crazy weekend last weekend (Valentine's Day). Because of a very spontaneous, very intense headache that lasted (with varying intensity) for two days, I went to a walk-in clinic on Monday. The doctor there told me it could possibly be a brain hemorrhage. So I went straight to the emergency room and got a CAT scan and an MRI. Luckily, everything was normal.

I've never had such an amazing experience.

Sitting in the ER with just a headache, with people all around me who look like crap, extremely sick or in extreme pain and crying. It didn't seem like I should be so whiny, with all these people so very noticably sick. But I was second out of the waiting room, so I guess my problem was pretty serious. All day in the emergency room, people down the hall crying or screaming in pain. And I'm sitting there with just a headache, but a headache that could kill me. It was a very weird feeling.

My girlfriend was with me, and my parents drove over to be here too. I never felt so fortunate to have loving people around me. My roommate, friends from school, and my brother and sister called later, wondering how I was doing. All these people that care, I never felt so happy to have them. Even the doctor. To him, I was just another patient. But when I told him what was wrong, he listened. If nothing else, he cared about fixing me up.

And the waiting! It's true, the waiting is the hardest part. I've been close to dying in the ocean before, but not like this. When the huge tropical storm surge was going to slam me into the pier, adrenaline pumped like never before and it was over in a minute, maybe two. The same is true for near-miss car accidents. But this! Waiting an hour or two for my MRI results was worse than anything I've ever felt. Or it would have been, if I could think about anything more than how much my head hurt at the time.

And then when I left... As soon as you turn out of the hospital parking lot, it's different. All the people beside you at red lights, they don't know what just happened to you, and they don't care. You're just another person again. You just have to rejoin the rest of the world.

Such a plethora of new and amazing feelings all in one day! To me, that made it a great day. You may be thinking "What a wuss, I've been to the emergency room 12 times, it's nothin'." Well, if you are thinking that, I don't care. It's hard to describe, but when I look back at that day, I feel like I've become closer to myself and that I grew a whole hell of a lot in one single day. I experienced so many new feelings, good and bad, and that makes me feel alive.

So, one more thing. Right now I'm still wearing the little wrist band they put around you with your name and bar code, etc. If you think I'm weird or you think I'm a pity whore, well, I don't care. If you can't understand my reasons for wearing it, I don't care. It's been a week and I still think about it a lot even though nothing's really wrong. Last Monday was a special day for me, and I don't see what's so wrong with reminding myself about it.