On Friends - Vol. III
a best friend will make you laugh, even in the ER
This is the third in a series of anecdotal posts about my friends and how they’ve helped me through some real rough stuff. My friends probably won’t remember much of these events, and even though my memory is generally shit, these events have stuck with me.
When I was 23, I did it again. I neglected to make my health a priority. I was living in DC, working in Georgetown. It was my first real, full-time job at a political communications consulting firm. The work was challenging; I felt rusty having been out of the industry for those two years I couldn’t find a job during the recession. I was eager and grateful to have finally landed this one making $37,000 a year. The firm was full of RBDs (Really Big Deals), people who handled the messaging and media for presidential campaigns and were the AOR (agency of record) for multinational corporations. They filmed Super Bowl spots. They had half of the Hill on speed dial.
It was a cutthroat environment - an environment where everyone had an agenda and no one really cared about anyone’s wellbeing. Mental health wasn’t a “thing” yet and if you took a sick day, people talked. As long as it taken me to get the job, I feared I could lose it at any second.
By the time I got anywhere near my apartment in the evenings, things were closed, including the pharmacy I used for my prescriptions. I am not a morning person and no matter how early I set my alarm and said I’d pick them up before work, inevitably I snoozed until the absolute latest possible minute. Five days passed and I was without my meds.
A has been my best friend since age 5. We worked summer internships in DC during college and lived in the GWU dorms together (which were nicer than my first apartment). When I moved to DC for my job at the firm, she had been there for a few years already. The timing worked out perfectly and we were able to find an apartment together. This redux was best case scenario and we were thrilled.
We planned to go out one night. I didn’t go out that much because I didn’t have much money. We went to one of our favorite Greek restaurants in Penn Quarter and then to the Chinatown movie theater to see Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. The theater was crowded but had stadium seating and we sat first row on the elevated platform. We were waiting for the movie to start when the lights dimmed… and I blacked out.
When I regained consciousness, I was in a stretcher in the middle of the bustling movie theater lobby, being wheeled out by paramedics with my best friend walking quickly beside me to keep up. I knew immediately what had happened and I was pissed. And embarrassed.
We wound up at the GWU Hospital in Foggy Bottom. I don’t remember the ambulance ride or arriving at the ER. I just remember there being a ton of people there and A sitting in the bay with me until after 3am. And not just sitting – getting me water, asking questions, refusing to leave my side when I told her she should go home. But the most vivid memory of the entire night is her making me laugh. In the ER! After having a seizure in front of hundreds of people! She was saying ridiculous things and though I was hysterically laughing on the outside, I was crumbling on the inside. Why had I let this happen? What was wrong with me?
I had jeopardized my health, my safety. Of the more than 3,000,000 people in the U.S. with epilepsy, I was considered a lucky one - my seizures were completely controlled by medication that had few serious side effects. These pills I neglected to get in a timely manner were enabling me to live a normal life with a serious medical condition. The least I could do was feed my body and brain the blue tablets it required to help regulate my central nervous system.
In addition to the sheer stupidity of all that, I had ruined a perfectly fun evening with my best friend. I was overwhelmed with guilt. I wanted to find a way to make it up to A. Not that she expected anything; she stayed with me all night because she’s my best friend. The next day, she drove me to the pharmacy to make sure I had all my meds.