I almost killed Charlie (and myself) the other night.
For dinner, I air-fried some fish filets, put them on tortillas along with some cheese, shredded lettuce, and gave them a healthy dollop of tartar sauce. On my fish burrito, with more fish, I really loaded up on the tartar sauce and even squirted on some jalapeno sauce to pep up the taste.
The two of us sat back on our recliner sofa to eat our meal and watch TV.
Holy shit, mine was extremely spicy! I kept it to myself, with eyes watering, silently cursing the fact that I had splashed my meal with the toxic green pepper sauce. The burrito was almost inedible. My mouth and throat were suffering, it was so hot, but I ate the whole thing under duress, pausing occasionally to catch my breath.
When I was done, Charlie asked if I wanted what was left of her burrito. Okay, I said, even though my esophagus was raw from the torture.
And then, Charlie mentioned something about the very spicy meal, which is a no-no for her due to her hiatal hernia and GIRD issues.
WTF, I thought, I didn’t put jalapeno sauce on her meal! So, I went to the refrig to check on the tartar sauce; maybe it was bad? Nope, that wasn’t the problem; instead of tartar sauce, I had accidentally slathered those fish burritos with creamed HORSERADISH!!!
Oh, Boy, I had inadvertently attempted to kill my wife (and myself!!). It could have been a murder-suicide. Luckily, we survived.
If Charlie had croaked, I might have been prosecuted for manslaughter, because I did something reckless that caused her demise. That would have sucked, particularly since we are celebrating our 50th year together in 2023.
BTW, I tried, unsuccessfully, to kill off my wife in the late 1970’s.
We were working together on some D.I.Y. stuff at our home in Riverside. I was bringing 2×4’s into the house when I spun around and clocked Charlie in the noggin, practically knocking her out. The 2×4 had struck her in the temple and she was pretty shaken up.
Shortly thereafter, Charlie experienced the “squiggly wigglies” (twinkling stars upsetting her vision) in one of her eyes and then… complete loss of vision in that eye. We quickly made an appointment with an ophthalmologist who surmised that it was an optic nerve injury. It was scary, he said, but it would eventually heal itself. In fact, he said that the problem would mysteriously go away in a matter of six weeks.
It did, thank goodness. One day, Charlie again had the squiggly-wigglies and … oila!… her vision miraculously came back. It was weird but very welcome.
Another unsuccessful attempt to kill off my wife took place many years ago on a vacation to Tulum, in the Mexican Yucatan, with our son Jeff and wife Carol.
Charlie was not feeling well. Something was very wrong with her and we suspected some kind of cardiovascular issue. There were no hospitals in Tulum, and the nearest was in Cancun, a couple of hours to the north.
Our doctor back home recommended that Charlie go to that hospital immediately. We talked it over a bit and decided (mostly my decision) to immediately fly home to California where Charlie could avail herself of internists and cardiologists that she knew and had confidence in. Another factor was insurance: we didn’t know what to expect in a Mexican hospital. It could bankrupt us, I thought.
So, we flew home while Charlie was deathly ill. It was a long, scary day.
When we got there, Charlie was immediately admitted to the local hospital. It turned out that she had experienced several pulmonary emboli, i.e. blood clots which had traveled from the legs into the lungs. Typically, pulmonary emboli are discovered in dead people when they are autopsied. Charlie had miraculously survived, no thanks to me.
Testing revealed that Charlie has an inherited blood disorder called “Factor V Leiden thrombophilia”, which genetically pre-disposes her to developing blood clots. It can be life threatening, as we found out in Tulum.
As I recall, Charlie experienced a couple of mild heart attacks while she was in that hospital. When the experts finally figured out what was going on, they did a cath lab procedure where she was fitted with an inferior vena cava “basket” to catch the clots which are traveling north toward the lungs. She was also prescribed medicine which dissolves the clots caught in the “basket”.
Besides almost dying, Charlie has been warned by her doctors to avoid long periods of sitting, as on airplanes. A maximum of 5 hours, tops, we were told. So, that pretty much ended our passion for world travel. (As an alternative, we bought an RV to “see the U.S.A.”)
On the bright side, Charlie survived my impetuous decision to fly her home instead of heading for the nearest hospital. Charlie’s doctor in California was not happy with me.
She could have died.
So, despite my numerous efforts to bludgeon, poison, and heart attack my wife to death, she is still alive and kicking. She’s a tough old bird, for sure.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?