One Strange Trip

Early Morning - May 9, 2012 

I was at happy hour. It was loud and the location seemed familiar, but judging by the look on my face I was confused as to why I was there. I was focused on the crowd. I thought I kept seeing my friends in the distance but as I moved closer to them they morphed into strangers. I grew increasingly frustrated and walked up a long staircase. I found myself in a dimly lit room with an oak bar and large paintings on the wall. I was looking at a gaudy gold picture frame wondering where I could get one for my condo when I heard a deep voice say “Julie, I’ve been looking for you”. I turned around expecting to see one of my friends, and there was nobody there.  A large mirror hanging behind the bar drew my eye up to a missing ceiling tile. A scaly snake with large black diamonds along its back lowered itself down from the ceiling and looked at me. It flicked its tongue and said “You are not going to find anybody here that you are looking for”. I really wanted to run downstairs but instead I just stared at the talking snake and asked why it had been looking for me. The snake grinned at me and bared its huge cartoonish like dagger-shaped teeth. I was startled, but once again I didn’t move. I just watched the snake as it bobbed and weaved in the air above my head while it said “Why do you think I’ve been looking for you”? I didn’t answer because I wasn't sure why a talking snake would be looking for me. The snake, growing impatient with my silence announced, “Julie. I’m going to kill you”. It lunged through the empty ceiling tile while gnashing its teeth. I turned around to start running and then felt sharp pain in my knees. I loudly cursed my Lyme disease joint pain while frantically searching for the door to the stairwell that I had just walked up. The snakes laughter filled the room as I realized there was no door. As the snake lunged at me again I pulled a candlestick off of a shelf with the intention of beating the snake over the head with it, but I ended up watching myself exit the room as the shelf spun around like a secret door in a James Bond movie. I ended up in a brightly lit room with no furniture and no windows. A rumbling noise caused me to look up and I saw the whole ceiling retract and then hundreds of snakes with cartoonish teeth dove out of the ceiling at me. I woke up. I was curled up in the fetal position in my bed with horrible stabbing pain in my knees, and my heart was pounding. I tentatively reached my hand out to make sure there were no snakes in my bed. When I was sure my bed was snake free, I rolled over on my back and saw bright orange neon tarantulas crawling all over the ceiling. I catapulted myself out of my bed and turned on the light. There I was shivering and simultaneously dripping with sweat as I clutched the lamp in my bedroom while looking for signs of the neon orange tarantulas I had just caught sight of on my ceiling. I had a pounding headache, my leg was throbbing and my knees hurt. As everything started slowly coming into focus I blurted out to an empty room, “wow that was alarming, maybe I should take a shower’.

You’re probably thinking to yourself, how did Julie know the neon orange spiders on the ceiling were tarantulas? Trust me, I know my spiders. Every time I go to Arizona to visit Marisa I look for pictures of scorpions on the internet so I know what I have to kill if I see one in my vicinity. Google always suggests that I may be interested in tarantulas too. 

Evening - May 8, 2012 

Red meat is one of the foods I was told to avoid during my Lyme disease treatment, but that did not stop me from going to Charlie Palmer Steakhouse to celebrate Rachael’s birthday. I had been red meat free for six months before indulging in a steak dinner. I could have ordered fish, but I had no intention of ordering fish at a steakhouse. The food was outstanding. I devoured everything on my plate. In fact, if you live in the DC area I highly recommend you go eat there. 

Shortly after our dinner plates were cleared, I got the chills. There I was, teeth chattering, full of goose bumps wondering if they had turned on the air conditioning full blast. My speech slowed down and became slurred, and then I had a fit of uncontrollable laughter that lasted for at least five minutes, maybe longer. Rachael and Miss S had shared a bottle of wine with dinner, and if you were a patron looking over at our table, you probably would have thought the empty bottle of wine had been consumed entirely by me. Once my laughter and slurred speech came to an end, I told the birthday girl we had to press on and order dessert. Three desserts were ordered. Three desserts were eaten. I sampled all three. They were delicious.

Later that night Miss S emailed my sister about the dinner and told her “It was like feeding a Gremlin after midnight”, in reference to my enthusiasm about dessert. A short time after midnight is when I started hallucinating. 

The Aftermath 

In 1998 Oprah was sued by the Texas cattle feeders for comments regarding beef that she made on her show that they claimed defamed the consumption of beef. I am not trying to bad mouth the meat industry here, nor do I have the following or influence on a large international scale that Oprah has, so I feel like I can state the following without repercussion: The steak f*cked me up! 

Is steak the only thing you consumed from your “Do Not Eat” list during dinner? 

No, steak is not the only thing I ate that night. French fries, asparagus (grilled in butter), and sugary desserts were all a part of my dinner. I went all out. Did I mention it was all delicious? 

Why are you singling out the red meat? 

Much like my experience with Chipotle, which was highlighted in the post “Life is Burrito-ful”, after Rachael's birthday dinner I experienced a spike in symptoms, and ended up dehydrated and feeling bloated. Also like my experience with Chipotle I was totally backed up for four days, and swore that I was five pounds lighter once I was fully operational again. Up until the steak dinner I had experimented here and there with eating dairy, gluten, processed sugar and fried food. These experiments all ended like the Chipotle adventure. Not once did my food experiments cause a drop in body temperature, slurred speech, uncontrollable laughter, vivid dreams and hallucinations. 

When I recounted my experience to my doctor at my next appointment, I began by acknowledging that I did not follow his guidance regarding red meat. He nodded and smiled before he said “Makes you wonder what kind of hormones or chemicals ended up in that cow before it was slaughtered and served to you for dinner. Your body is in a very reactionary state right now and something in that meat caused you to have quite a chemical reaction. I would recommend you stay away from red meat moving forward”. 

Duly Noted!