Department of Special Circumstances

I’ve been quite ill today. Second bad cold in three weeks. This tells me that I am severely overdoing it, stressing myself out with too many tasks, jobs, errands, and so forth. Need to slow down. Well, today I canceled my office hour and decided to try to rest at home to recover. I wrote my lecture for the class at 3:30pm and ordered the demo equipment I needed. It was going to be a perfect class, in which I would make up the approximated half an hour of lag I feel I’ve been in the last week in terms of the material I’m scheduled to cover in order to be at the same place as the similar class taught by my colleague Doug. Unusually, I decided to drive to work, so that I could get in and out fast and go home and continue recuperating after (as I am supposed to be now, but inexplicably I am… blogging…) and it was all timed nicely. In – perfect lecture, catching up on everything – out. And then to bed.

Of course, that meant that something had to go wrong. This time it was quite spectacular. As I reached USC, going along Exposition Blvd. to find street parking, within minutes of class starting, something did happen. There was something blocking traffic in my lane and I saw that an Infiniti SUV had just stopped in the lane, and so cars were going around it in a noisy huff. annoyed at the driver for delaying them. I pulled around it too, and saw that there was a woman slumped over to one side! So of course I stopped my car, put on the hazards and ran back to see what the matter was. The woman had fainted, it seemed, and as I approached she seemed to stir out of her haze somewhat, so I asked her if she was ok. She said no. So I said I would call the emergency services. Did she want me to? Yes. Shall I use your phone? Ok. At this point I started fiddling with her phone only to realize that I had no idea how to make a phone call on an iphone, and so I ran back to my car and got my phone and called. I’d never called 911 before!

I was passed on to a paramedic who ran through some questions after I described the circumstances and our location. He wanted me to ask her various things (age, history of heart problems?, is there pain?) and I also was able to pass on various things I observed (was she breathing easily, alert? etc). I got from her that she was in pain and in fact she was pregnant, and was on her way to the doctor when things went bad. I had to stay on the phone with the guy until the paramedics arrived, in case her condition changed. So I talked to the paramedic on the phone and spoke to the woman to keep her awake. Eventually I heard sirens (they were not coming from too far away.. the little fire station on Jefferson just North of the campus – we were South) and then sure enough they popped around the corner, the giant firetruck, the little one, and the ambulance. Quite a flotilla of support. After some frantic waving I managed to get them to notice us, and they swung around from the other side of the road and various firemen jumped out. I was able to explain to them the situation and then asked if I was still needed. No. I did not know her and so my role was over.

So this allowed me to (now I did not need to be on the phone) call a colleague (Tameem) to run over and tell my class that I was on my way, just delayed, and then find parking and run over to class. 25 minutes late, and now just as behind in the material as I was last week. All the catch up plans for this lecture fell by the wayside.

Such is life. Sometimes things come up unexpectedly that are just way more important. I coughed and spluttered my way though 2/3 of the lecture and came home.

And soon to bed.

-cvj