We headed back to the boat, and I think the next stop was a two
hour cruise with drinks. I decided that I wasn’t too comfortable on
the boat for two hours, so wouldn’t have any alcohol.

After a few minutes on the boat, we hit some choppy water, and I
started to feel unwell. I crouched down, and felt a bit better,
especially after taking off my jacket, since I was having hot flashes
and cold sweats. Strangely, as I was crouching down, my feet and
hands started to tingle. I stumbled to an open chair, and when I
asked if I could sit there, I was told that his friend was returning
so I should not sit there. Luckily, a crew member came and asked me
if I wanted to go to the upper deck. I didn’t really want to go to
the upper deck, since it seemed like it would be rocking more, being
higher up off the ground. She said it would be better though, and I
knew that there would be more open chairs there since it was still
raining a bit, and was somewhat cold outside. The crew member got a
seat for me, and told me to look at the horizon, which should help.
She also gave me some water, and said I should drink all of it. I
thought she might be right. I wasn’t feeling much better, but
concentrated on breathing in deep breaths through my nose, and fully
exhale through my mouth to try to get all the CO2 out. Usually when I
don’t feel well it helps a lot to keep cool, which I was, and
concentrate on breathing. Strangely, this didn’t seem to help much.
In fact, as more time passed, my hands and legs were starting to
tingle more, and shake a bit. I was having a very hard time
controlling my hands, it was very difficult to open them. I was
starting to feel very bad after about ten minutes, my hands were
frozen and I couldn’t feel them, my feet were tingling and that
feeling had moved up to my legs and arms. I could not drink the water
any more because I couldn’t move my arms at the elbows any more. I
was like some poorly made action figure, with stiff arms and legs,
hands frozen forever in some strange grip. It was about this time
that I started to fear that I was having a heart attack. I didn’t
really think that it would be likely, since I’m fairly healthy, but my
family does have some history of heart trouble on my mother’s side.
My stomach started to tingle as well, and most of the muscles up and
down my back and stomach were spasming. By the time the ship crew
member returned to ask if I was feeling better, I stammered out that I
felt very sick, and would like medical attention. She asked if I was
with anyone, and I told her about Dekai Wu, but it was becoming
difficult to talk. My face was starting to tingle and my lips were
numb. My speech was beginning to become a bit stiff.

It was about at this time that I started to have some very strange
thoughts. Perhaps this wasn’t a heart attack, since it seemed that my
left and right sides were equally affected. Still, I could not move
my hands or arms, and was starting to have trouble feeling my face,
which was going numb. Perhaps I was having some trouble getting
oxygen to my brain, and I was having some form of dementia or brain
damage centered on my muscular control centers? I was very worried
about that because there is also some history of Parkinson’s in my
family, which is a break-down of motor control dealing with brain
functions. I thought that I could think very well, but was having
trouble controlling my body (I was shaking all over by now) and was
just very scared. I couldn’t actually think any coherent thoughts
other than that I was very scared, this might be a heart attack or
some other scary mental problem, and then I just kept repeating that I
couldn’t feel my hands.

Not too long after I was going numb in my face (my hands, feet,
arms, legs, and stomach were already tingling or numb) I threw up.
After throwing up, I really started to feel better, except now I was
worried because I had ruining my jacket and ACL/COLING bag. The
ship’s crew came and said that they had called an ambulance. I
believe that we docked at the Sydney Opera House, which may or may not
have been on our itinerary. The crew came and helped clean up a bit.
Warm water on my hands really helped there, and I started to get some
feeling in them again. After maybe ten minutes of that I started to
get some feeling back in them.

I got off of the boat, I was able to walk to some extent, and we
waited for the taxi for about twenty minutes in the rain. It never
came, and instead Deepak took a Taxi with me to St. Vincent’s
Hospital. At the triage desk, the nurse asked me some questions, but
said that mostly likely I had become seasick and hyperventilated,
cutting off oxygen flow to my extremities. I don’t agree with that
analysis but I can’t be sure. I have been seasick before, and never
had any problems with numbness and tingling in my extremities. The
other option is that I had food poisoning. I don’t think I’ve ever
had food poisoning in my life before, so perhaps that was it. I don’t
think it was a heart attack or anything like that, but I’m not sure
I’ll know until I have food poisoning or a heart attack to compare
with. I did want to see a doctor though because I was a bit worried
about what had happened, and I still felt quite ill.

I met with someone at the registration desk, and learned about
the Australian health care system. Basically since I am not
Australian I was treated as a “guest”, which costs AU $95 for the
visit, and if I see a doctor another AU $95. Costs for medical tests
would be in addition to that, at some cost to be decided later. That
sounded quite reasonable to me. I think the last time I was at a
hospital in Dallas, it cost about $600 and I waited about a total of
six hours for what we thought might have been a poison spider bite (I
had a really nasty and bloody foot from it) but in the end was a
fire-ant bite on a blood blister from basketball. And I had insurance
(although, out-of-state student insurance) for that visit.

At about 8pm we caught a taxi, and I went home. I still didn’t feel
well, spent some time cleaning off the worst of my clothes, and then
slept. I slept for about eleven hours, and woke up feeling much
better. I dropped off my clothes at a dry cleaning place, had some
coffee, and am now back at the COLING/ACL talks, with a healthy fear
of seafood (which I love!) and boat rides (which I’ve never had much
of an opinion about, aside from an excellent dinner cruise around New
York city a few years ago.)

I will avoid seafood for the rest of this trip, and will spend
some time reflecting on what was, at the time, a near-death
experience in my mind. Also, thinking about applications of Bayesian
methods to multilingual summarization.