We headed back to the boat, and I think the next stop was a two
\nhour cruise with drinks. I decided that I wasn’t too comfortable on
\nthe boat for two hours, so wouldn’t have any alcohol. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After a few minutes on the boat, we hit some choppy water, and I
\nstarted to feel unwell. I crouched down, and felt a bit better,
\nespecially after taking off my jacket, since I was having hot flashes
\nand cold sweats. Strangely, as I was crouching down, my feet and
\nhands started to tingle. I stumbled to an open chair, and when I
\nasked if I could sit there, I was told that his friend was returning
\nso I should not sit there. Luckily, a crew member came and asked me
\nif I wanted to go to the upper deck. I didn’t really want to go to
\nthe upper deck, since it seemed like it would be rocking more, being
\nhigher up off the ground. She said it would be better though, and I
\nknew that there would be more open chairs there since it was still
\nraining a bit, and was somewhat cold outside. The crew member got a
\nseat for me, and told me to look at the horizon, which should help.
\nShe also gave me some water, and said I should drink all of it. I
\nthought she might be right. I wasn’t feeling much better, but
\nconcentrated on breathing in deep breaths through my nose, and fully
\nexhale through my mouth to try to get all the CO2 out. Usually when I
\ndon’t feel well it helps a lot to keep cool, which I was, and
\nconcentrate on breathing. Strangely, this didn’t seem to help much.
\nIn fact, as more time passed, my hands and legs were starting to
\ntingle more, and shake a bit. I was having a very hard time
\ncontrolling my hands, it was very difficult to open them. I was
\nstarting to feel very bad after about ten minutes, my hands were
\nfrozen and I couldn’t feel them, my feet were tingling and that
\nfeeling had moved up to my legs and arms. I could not drink the water
\nany more because I couldn’t move my arms at the elbows any more. I
\nwas like some poorly made action figure, with stiff arms and legs,
\nhands frozen forever in some strange grip. It was about this time
\nthat I started to fear that I was having a heart attack. I didn’t
\nreally think that it would be likely, since I’m fairly healthy, but my
\nfamily does have some history of heart trouble on my mother’s side.
\nMy stomach started to tingle as well, and most of the muscles up and
\ndown my back and stomach were spasming. By the time the ship crew
\nmember returned to ask if I was feeling better, I stammered out that I
\nfelt very sick, and would like medical attention. She asked if I was
\nwith anyone, and I told her about Dekai Wu, but it was becoming
\ndifficult to talk. My face was starting to tingle and my lips were
\nnumb. My speech was beginning to become a bit stiff. <\/p>\n
It was about at this time that I started to have some very strange
\nthoughts. Perhaps this wasn’t a heart attack, since it seemed that my
\nleft and right sides were equally affected. Still, I could not move
\nmy hands or arms, and was starting to have trouble feeling my face,
\nwhich was going numb. Perhaps I was having some trouble getting
\noxygen to my brain, and I was having some form of dementia or brain
\ndamage centered on my muscular control centers? I was very worried
\nabout that because there is also some history of Parkinson’s in my
\nfamily, which is a break-down of motor control dealing with brain
\nfunctions. I thought that I could think very well, but was having
\ntrouble controlling my body (I was shaking all over by now) and was
\njust very scared. I couldn’t actually think any coherent thoughts
\nother than that I was very scared, this might be a heart attack or
\nsome other scary mental problem, and then I just kept repeating that I
\ncouldn’t feel my hands. <\/p>\n
\narms, legs, and stomach were already tingling or numb) I threw up.
\nAfter throwing up, I really started to feel better, except now I was
\nworried because I had ruining my jacket and ACL\/COLING bag. The
\nship’s crew came and said that they had called an ambulance. I
\nbelieve that we docked at the Sydney Opera House, which may or may not
\nhave been on our itinerary. The crew came and helped clean up a bit.
\nWarm water on my hands really helped there, and I started to get some
\nfeeling in them again. After maybe ten minutes of that I started to
\nget some feeling back in them. <\/p>\n
\nwaited for the taxi for about twenty minutes in the rain. It never
\ncame, and instead Deepak took a Taxi with me to St. Vincent’s
\nHospital. At the triage desk, the nurse asked me some questions, but
\nsaid that mostly likely I had become seasick and hyperventilated,
\ncutting off oxygen flow to my extremities. I don’t agree with that
\nanalysis but I can’t be sure. I have been seasick before, and never
\nhad any problems with numbness and tingling in my extremities. The
\nother option is that I had food poisoning. I don’t think I’ve ever
\nhad food poisoning in my life before, so perhaps that was it. I don’t
\nthink it was a heart attack or anything like that, but I’m not sure
\nI’ll know until I have food poisoning or a heart attack to compare
\nwith. I did want to see a doctor though because I was a bit worried
\nabout what had happened, and I still felt quite ill. <\/p>\n
\nthe Australian health care system. Basically since I am not
\nAustralian I was treated as a “guest”, which costs AU $95 for the
\nvisit, and if I see a doctor another AU $95. Costs for medical tests
\nwould be in addition to that, at some cost to be decided later. That
\nsounded quite reasonable to me. I think the last time I was at a
\nhospital in Dallas, it cost about $600 and I waited about a total of
\nsix hours for what we thought might have been a poison spider bite (I
\nhad a really nasty and bloody foot from it) but in the end was a
\nfire-ant bite on a blood blister from basketball. And I had insurance
\n(although, out-of-state student insurance) for that visit. <\/p>\n
At about 8pm we caught a taxi, and I went home. I still didn’t feel
\nwell, spent some time cleaning off the worst of my clothes, and then
\nslept. I slept for about eleven hours, and woke up feeling much
\nbetter. I dropped off my clothes at a dry cleaning place, had some
\ncoffee, and am now back at the COLING\/ACL talks, with a healthy fear
\nof seafood (which I love!) and boat rides (which I’ve never had much
\nof an opinion about, aside from an excellent dinner cruise around New
\nYork city a few years ago.) <\/p>\n
\nsome time reflecting on what was, at the time, a near-death
\nexperience in my mind. Also, thinking about applications of Bayesian
\nmethods to multilingual summarization. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}