All Apologies to the Boomtown Rats...

But I (officially) don't like Mondays any more. Usually Mondays aren't that bad for me... since, in my weekend-working world, Mondays are actually in the middle of the work-week for me.

I work alone on Mondays, which can be a pain in the butt at times. But usually, Mondays are slow sports days. Monday Night Football means I have to work late during football season, and that isn't a lot of fun, either, since I don't earn comp time or overtime for staying late.

But, all in all, Mondays usually aren't that bad. At least they weren't until this week.

Click here to continue reading my dramatic saga.

Everything started off normally enough. I stayed late on Sunday night, mapping out my sportscast for Monday, because I knew I'd have to spend Monday afternoon shooting a golf tournament. Basically, I just "stacked" my show, making sure to get all the prep work like video cues and graphics done, so that if I ran late and had to ad-lib my Monday show, there would just enough in the script for me to not look like a complete fool.

So, I get to work Monday, grab a news van, and head out to the golf course. I've got it planned out so that I should get there just in time to catch some local players as they make the turn near the clubhouse and parking lot. Otherwise, I'll be chasing them all over the golf course, and wasting a lot of time.

About halfway there, I hear a loud thumping noise in the back of the van. I stop at a traffic light, roll down my window, and the woman in the car next to me verifies my fear: I've got a flat tire.

Great.

I pull into a parking lot, walk to the gas station across the street, and call the station. Of course, I can't reach anyone that can help me out, and nobody quite knows what to do. I know one thing: I'm certainly not going to change the tire myself. Not when I'm on one of the busiest streets in the city, only five miles from the station, and dressed in khaki and white with sandals.

Anyway, I finally get hold of Cory, who says he can get away from work in about ten minutes to come get me. He takes another news van, picks me up, then I have to drop him back off at the station, and head out to the golf course. By the time I get there, it's almost an hour later than I planned.

Fortunately, things work out. I manage to get video of several local golfers, the very last of whom hit a thirty-foot putt just as I was getting ready to pack it in. At one point, I wasn't really looking where I was going, and I tripped over a curb, but only one person saw that, and we shared a little laugh. A little later on, I had to shake a couple fire ants off of my sandal, but that didn't seem like a big deal either. The little bastards are everywhere here in the South.

I was still running late, of course, but expected to get back to the station by 5:00, leaving just enough time to write my show, edit all of my video, and maybe even brush my hair and put on makeup by my air-time at 6:23-ish. No time for dilly-dallying, but enough time to get the job done. Or so I thought.

On the drive back, my underarm started itching like crazy. I looked, and there were a whole bunch of little bumps on the inside of my upper arm. It really itched a lot, so I decided to waste a few more of my precious minutes and stop at a drugstore to buy some Benadryl Ointment. I usually keep some in my purse this time of year anyway, since I get bitten by so many bugs shooting baseball in the summer.

While I was in the store, my ears started burning. Not in a "someone's talking about me" kind of way. More like a literal, "feels like they're on fire" kind of way. When I got back out to the van, I looked in the mirror. They were bright pink on the outside, dark purple on the inside. Uh-oh.

When I got back to the station, I ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. My red underarm bumps had spread to my torso and thighs. I itched like crazy. And I didn't feel so hot. But it was 5:15 and I had a show to do. I hunted down our news producer and told him I wasn't feeling so good and that if he wanted to take any of my sports time, he was welcome to do so. Then I went back to my office. But I couldn't work. I was having a little trouble breathing, had horrible heartburn, and couldn't stop scratching myself.

Cory heard I wasn't feeling so good, and came to my office, only to find me lying on the floor. I hadn't passed out, but I felt like I was starting to panic, so I laid down. It was easier to breathe like that anyway.

I've never had any kind of weird allergic reaction to any kind of insect. I've been stung by bees, yellow jackets, wasps-- nothing. I'm pretty sure I've even been stung by fire ants before, to no ill effects. Cory looked up "Fire ant stings" on the internet, and sure enough, it says that they can cause anaphylactic shock. Great. He told me I needed to go to the emergency room, and I said I couldn't do any such thing until I did my newscast.

A few minutes later, my news director told me the same thing. He called Dave in (which made me feel awful, since it wasn't just Dave's day off, he was also trying to take a couple of vacation days this week, too). Then he started helping me put the show together, thankfully, since I was having trouble thinking straight. Dave arrived around 5:45, and Cory drove me to the hospital.

Actually, he drove me to more than one hospital. When we arrived at the Medical Center, the emergency room waiting area had overflowed into the parking lot, and a woman told us she'd been waiting for over three hours. I got inside, and the waiting room looked like a prison ward: Metal benches, no magazines, and one TV bolted to a far wall. We got the hell out of there and drove to St. Francis instead.

Cory had to run back to work, and by the time he returned 45 minutes later, they were ready to take me in. I actually felt a little better, though it was pretty obvious that I was in some sad shape. Most of my body was purple (with the exception of my lower arms and legs), and my blood pressure tested at 77/56. The doctor asked me "Are you sure you didn't strip naked and roll in an ant hill?" We laughed, and counted my ant bites. There were three. Two on one foot, one on the other.

So, they slapped me into a cot and prepared an IV of steroids and antihistamines for me. I was shivering a bit and feeling a little queazy, but I didn't start shaking and feeling really nauseus until she missed with the IV needle several times. I think I was going into shock, but I'm not sure if it was because of the fire ants or because of her lack of needle insertion skills.

After about an hour, I was back to a normal color. After two hours, they sent me off with a prescription for Prednasone and Pepcid (which, in addition to being an antacid, is also an antihistamine. Who knew?). After filling my prescriptions, I went back to work and anchored the last two shows of the night. Dave stuck around for a little while, just to make sure I had everything squared away, then tried to go back to enjoying his time off.

So, after the flat tire, and the trip to the emergency room, I got home from work, and got my last piece of bad news for the day... an email from Jason and Peter saying that they had to put one of their cats to sleep. Sebastian was one of the nicest, sweetest kitties I've ever met, and I was very fond of him. Bad news comes in threes, right?