The Day I Almost Died

My husband and I weren't yet married.  We were at my parents house with a U-Haul gathering what we could for the apartment that we would have together once we were married.  My parent's apartment was like a townhouse.  It was on several levels and had a pretty big basement.  They had lots of great stuff stored down there that we were looking at and through.  Most of it they no longer wanted so we were going to steal it for our apartment.  I spent a good chunk of the day coming and going in that basement.  After a while, I started getting a really bad headache.  I took some Ibuprofen because that usually takes care of any headaches I get.  I thought that it might just be because I was working so hard.  Well, this time the ibuprofren didn't take care of it.  The headache just persisted and kept getting worse.  I started feeling naseous and just wanted to lie down and rest.  My parents were planning on taking us out to dinner, but I thought really hard about whether I wanted to go.  By this time, I was feeling so horrible that I was really considering just laying down on the couch and letting them bring me something back.  I decided that I should maybe go with them because we wouldn't be up there much longer.  In fact, we were leaving the next day.  We went and ate at someplace (I think it was a Ryan's), and all of a sudden I started feeling better.  I was so happy that I was feeling better because I had been feeling pretty bad.  We came back and watched tv for a while and went to bed.  The next morning I woke up feeling bad all over again.  My same headache was back.  I was feeling naseous.  My husband wasn't feeling great either.  We loaded up the car hoping that we would get home okay because we didn't feel good.  Well, it just took a few minutes down the road before both my husband and I started feeling better.

None of us thought about how weird this was at the time.  We were just happy that we were feeling okay, and we went on with our lives.  It wasn't but a few months later that somehow my parents learned that they had a leak in their basement.  It was Carbon Monoxide.  They had been getting low levels for a long time, but they didn't visit the basement much so they didn't get anything horribly.  The leak was from the water heater in the basement.  We had spent much of that day in the basement which is why it was so bad for us.  I firmly believe that if I hadn't decided to go out that evening with my parents, I would have been passed out or even dead by the next morning.  That's how bad it was.  Needless to say, the apartments my parents lived in installed a Carbon Monoxide detector very shortly afterward. 

Carbon Monoxide is not anything to mess around with.  Make sure that you have one installed in your house and that it's working properly.  If you have any symptoms that are suspicious like a horrible headache or nausea that gets better with fresh air, make sure to get checked out immediately!!