Merry Christmas, with a side of near death.

Merry day-after-Christmas! I hope everybody had a wonderful holiday! For me this holiday has been going non stop from Christmas Eve.

Owen's parents got here at 1am on the 24th. They were supposed to get here at 7pm on the 23rd. We are just happy that they even made it with all the snow and ice we have been having.

In the morning we went and picked Owen's parents from their hotel. Then we took them on a tour of the post. They loved seeing and hearing about all the buildings on post.

Then we came home and I started cooking while they all watched Wall-e. For Christmas Eve dinner I made cranberry and orange glazed turkey, rosemary mashed potatoes, baked yams (fresh, not from a can) and steamed green beans.

The turkey took forever to cook. It was only supposed to be cooked in 3 hours... it took almost 5. I think our oven is leaking heat.

After our very late dinner (we ate at 9pm) Owen's parents went back to their hotel. As they were leaving I realized that I still had to wrap all of the presents. Owen would help with this, but he sucks at wrapping. I was up till 5am wrapping presents. I went to bed for the three hours of sleep that I was gonna get. Right around the time that we should have been leaving for church, Owen's parents called. They had slept through their alarm. We had too. They woke us up by calling!

Owen went to pick them up. When they got back we opened presents. This is the part of the day where things got interesting.

The kids tore through their presents. Then after their chaos was done, it was my turn. I opened a decorator rug that Owen's mom had originally bought for my mom. I was looking at it and my skin started to crawl. I didnt understand why, until I read the tag.

OH DEAR GOD!!!!!

The backing of the rug was made of Latex. For those of you who dont know, I am very allergic to latex. So allergic that I go into Anaphylaxis. That link will take you to the wikipedia description of Anaphylaxis, for those of you who want a detailed discription of what that entails. I will give you a minute to read it....

OK. Now that we are all acutely aware of what Anaphylaxis is... Now you understand why my post says "with a side of near death". That is right. All of a sudden I had a 2 foot by 3 foot rug of death in my lap, in direct skin contact with my arms. The itching I was feeling was my body beginning the process of shutting down. I imediately jumped up and ran for the bathroom, where we keep all the allergy medicine. See here is the thing. I do go into Anaphylaxis, but it takes my body about 20 minutes to start shuting down completely. So if I am fast I can sometimes get allergy medicine into my system fast enough to stop the reaction before my lungs and heart stop. So I bolted for the bathroom and downed the majority of a bottle of liquid childrens allergy medicine. Then I stripped down and started scubbing. It doesnt matter if I take medicine in time if I leave trace amounts of latex on my skin.

Right around the time that we were gonna find out if we had to call an ambulence cause I was dying, I passed out into the bottom of the shower. Thank GOD my husband is a medic. I was dying in the bottom of the shower, naked as a newborn, on christmas. Then Owen, in a stroke of brilliance, got me awake and yelled in my face that if I died,I was taking our unborn child with me. At 22 weeks, the baby wouldnt be able to survive on its own, assuming they could get it out fast enough. That shocked me enough that I started fighting to breath. I was certain they could revive me, but what about my baby. I was my babies only hope. Literally. Somehow, while Owen's mom was calling for an ambulence, Owen got me out of the shower and into a shirt and pj pants. He didnt want them taking me out of the house naked if he could avoid it. While we were waiting for them to show up, the medicine started to work.

I am gonna take a moment now to tell you how Owen was able to save my life. When a person goes into Anaphylaxis, they will generally receive a shot of epinephrine, which is an artificial form of adrenaline. People who know that they will go into Anaphylaxis gernerally carry an epi pen, which is a single dose of epinephrine in a quick eject syringe. I dont have an epi pen. If I did, Owen would have used it. Instead he scared me about the baby dying, which caused me to panic, which forced my body to release natural adrenaline. Adrenaline forces the heart to continue to pump past the Anaphylactic reaction until the allergy medicine can do its job. So yeah.

Back to the story at hand. The ambulence finally showed up, but by then I was breathing regularly. Still weakly, but not hyperventilating either. They took my vitals and decided that if I wanted, I could stay home, under the supervision of my spouse.

So I opted to stay home. I spent the rest of the day sleeping to recover from the day. Then I woke up around 4pm and started cooking christmas dinner.

I made salmon, steamed veggies (zuchinni, mexican squash, carrots and broccoli) saffron lemon rice, and leftover turkey for the kids, since they wont eat fish. I also made a cranberry apple pie.

A good time was had by all. Except that I got the impression that my inlaws feel really awful about the rug. I tried to explain that it wasnt their fault and that I wasnt even a little mad.... but I think they feel guilty. I just hope it doesnt ruin the rest of their trip!