Just feel like writing up my experience so far:
FYI - I went with my fiancé, but whether that was wise or not is a completely different topic saved for another thread.
Thursday - Our flight from CA is at 6:40am and since we're supposed to get to the airport at like 5:30, I just pull an all-nighter figuring I'd sleep on the plane. Before we get on the plane they say "Captain is still on the 405 freeway and the hydrolic leak 'doesn't seem so bad' so we should board", the captain shows up and everyone gets off the plane because it turns out the hydrolic leak is 'significant' and they need a part. They don't have the part in stock, but people from LA will drive it down and fix the plane and it'll take off 2 hours late (our connecting flight to Charleston is going to be missed so we reschedule to a later connecting flight).
Well 2 hours later they announce "Whoops, LAX didn't have the part after all, so we're going to FLY THE PART IN FROM SALT LAKE CITY in 3 hours and then fix it and then fly". Well, this is pretty bad because at that point we'd get into Atlanta, Georgia so late we'd miss the last connecting flight to Charleston and have to spend the night at the airport and lose a day on an already short trip considering the flight length. After dealing with the phone people and tossing around ideas of getting our checked bags and taking a taxi up to LAX to fly from LA instead, we ended up getting on a different flight out of Orange County where we were at to Atlanta that would get to Atlanta with a 2 hour layover so we could make the last flight to Charleston and get in around 11pm.
The flight goes fine until the end where they announce that due to thunderstorms in Atlanta, the airport is backed up and we're going to fly in circles for a while until we're clear to land. Well, ok we have 2 hour layover so a slight delay is fine.
35 mins later the pilot announces they still don't have room so we're going to keep flying in circles, HOWEVER our gas is low and we may need to land in Birmingham and refuel and head out again. This would pretty much fuck me for making my connecting flight and I'd have to sleep at the airport. Luckily 15 mins later there's room and we land at Atlanta with about 45 mins until my connecting flight.
Get on the connecting flight and they say "welcome, we're going to get you guys out before the storm!". Sitting on the plane when it's about to drive out to the runway it starts pouring and lightning starts coming down RIGHT NEXT TO THE AIRPORT. They ground all flights and freeze the airport waiting for the storm to pass. This could take 30mins->3 hours. It's 9pm EST and I've been at the airport since 5:30AM PST and haven't slept. Finally after about 45 mins they say we're clear to go but that we'll be flying around thunderstorms the whole 1 hour flight.
So 1 hour of non-stop turbulence and lightning all around we finally land in Charleston, get a cab and get in our hotel room at 12:30am EST. The original plans of getting in at a nice 4:30pm EST, exploring the town a bit, and getting a good sleep gone.
Friday - Ended up sleeping in half the day after all that. Did some stuff in town, was fun.
Saturday - Walked a bit and went to lunch, got out of lunch into FLASH FLOOD RAIN. Hotel was only a few blocks so we tried to run it holy shit no that does not work this is not LA rain. We ended up under an overhang soaking and called a cab. Got back and showered, changed and spent the day in since the rain was keeping us from doing anything. It cleared up at night and we went on a historic pub tour which was fun and I got to meet a real Irish person!
Sunday - Was supposed to take a bus from my hotel to a Plantation to spend the day there touring and researching the history and get back by 2pm. Hotel booked it. Got out super early even though I was half hung-over and got on the tour bus. 30 mins into the tour after it had picked up 6 other people and the tour guide and the bus was driving IN the city and the guide was talking about the city itself I realized they booked me on the wrong tour and I was on a city tour for 90 mins and not a bus to the plantation. Since I couldn't really do anything (wasn't going to interrupt the guide in a tour bus full of people and be like "uh, I'm on the wrong bus, please take me back" and I'd already missed the pick up times for the plantation tours I just made the best of it and enjoyed the city tour and went back to the hotel.
We went out for snacks and got tickets to see the old city jail on a ghost tour. Charleston is apparently the #2 haunted city in America and the jail was the pinpoint of evil spirits and ghosts and such. It had started raining and we walked over with umbrellas to see how bad the walk would be if it was raining hard. The places was pretty old and horror movie set creepy looking and we headed back and decided we'd take a cab. We took a cab, my fiancé was acting a little weird because the ghost tour was her idea and she loves adventure and doesn't believe in ghosts but about 30 mins before she'd been drying her hair in the bathroom and stalling and seeming like she didn't want to go. Was odd.
We got to the jail and met the tour guide and the group, they told us a little about the jail and then we started walking on the outside grounds. Here's where it gets weird. I was walking with my fiancé sharing an umbrella and I look back and she's not moving with the group, I'm gonna say something and she's staring up at a wall/window just blank stare and then suddenly she goes into this lurch and starts walking in circles for about 15 seconds. I'm figuring she's pranking everyone since we're on a ghost tour and I'm like stop messing around.
...and she collapses to the floor and starts convulsing, her neck and her arm tightening like something straight out of a horror movie. I drop everything and run over and am calling her name and she's just like turning red and tightening with her arm bent up over her neck and am I'm yelling and people run over and a couple of the people on the tour yell that she's having a seizure and the tour guide calls 911 and a few people on the tour who came over know how to respond to seizures and they get her in the right sideways position, keep talking to her, get her pulse and make sure she's breathing. She goes into a non-responsive state and starts yelling out "mommy, mommy" and then passes out. The fire truck comes, the paramedics come and eventually the cops come as she wakes up and is totally confused and doesn't know the date or where she is. She thinks she was just taking a nap on the grass and doesn't believe everyone telling her she'd had a seizure.
We're at the ER for 3-4 hours, she's sore all over, her head is killing her and she chipped a tooth and her teeth hurt. She seems ok, just very shook up. They give her pain meds and anxiety meds and eventually we get discharged. Take a taxi back to the hotel. We try to go to sleep and about 2 hours later she asks me to take her back to the ER because she's getting that uneasy feeling, a sense of dread that she felt about 30 mins before the seizure and she was very confused/disorientated and had to keep reminding herself where she was and why she was here.
It takes like 30 mins to get a cab at this time of night (~1:30am), we get over the ER and her confusion goes from a little to SUPER BAD. I ask her the president she says "Michelle Clinton" and I say "Barack Obama" and she says "That's what I said, stop scaring me" and things get progressively worse over the hours in ER and she thinks we're in CA and slowly she forgets who I even am, going from "For a second there I didn't recognize you, you looked like someone else" to "Why are you holding my hand, we just met in class. Better stop or the professor will think we're romantic"; that was really fucking scary. Like Alzheimer's scary, and suddenly having someone close to you forget who you are, really really hard. Everyone was pretty scared because seizures are hard to diagnose and they didn't think confusion that bad should still be happening 7-8 hours after the seizure. They ran a CT scan of her head and it was fine and blood tests were fine. They wanted to do a spinal tap lumbar puncture and see if she had a brain infection, but she got freaked and it made me uncomfortable because there were risks involved. They said I can watch over her for 24 hours and bring her back for one if she is the same or gets worse.
Monday - We were at the ER from 2am-8am. Luckily by around 8-9am she started doing better and her memories were all coming back and she knew what was going on. We were supposed to fly back today, but everyone agreed she should rest for a few days and we should watch her to make sure she doesn't have another seizure before getting on a plane. So I tried to extend our stay at the hotel but of course they were full, so we slept 2 hours, packed, checked out, checked into a new hotel and slept all day today. I also talked to the airlines and got our tickets changed to Thursday and they waived the non-changeable part/fee because of medical emergency which was nice of them. We have a follow up appointment at the hospital tomorrow at 1pm so they can see how she's doing. We'll probably sleep until then and if she's ok, after that maybe we'll do a little local touring on Tuesday afternoon and sight-see on Wednesday since we haven't had a chance to go to any museums really because of the flight delays, the thunderstorms and the seizure. Flying back Thursday.
My fiancé seems ok now other than a headache and her body being sore all over (they say that's normal from the muscles tensing up + she has chronic back/neck pain and obviously all that aggravated it). She's clear in the head and just a little tired. She's drinking lots of water and getting lots of rest.
The most likely explanation was that she had tried a new medication for pain that can have a side effect of seizures. The doctor asked if she had taken Tramadol or Ura~~? and she hadn't taken Tramadol but she thought the second one was the name of the medication she just started taking on this trip that a pain management doctor gave her as something non-opiate but possibly more effective than Advil/Tylenol. On top of that her anxiety levels had been high from the crazy flight stuff all day, the thunderstorms, etc... and she hadn't been drinking a lot of water in this humid/hot weather so she was probably dehydrated as well. All which resulted in her first seizure ever.
The confusion last so long was probably just everything and being super freaked out over having a seizure for the first time. Plus the meds they gave her for the anxiety and pain at the ER could've prolonged it. Seems ok.
But it's also a little bit of a freaky coincidence that she had the seizure at the "haunted" old jail once she stepped onto the grounds of it. And she says that the last thing she remembers is looking up at window and seeing a ghost-like white light and it smiled at her and then she remembers nothing until she woke up on the ground surrounded by paramedics. Basically she looked up, saw something and then froze, went into a walking in circles lurch and feel backwards onto the ground going into convulsions. Could've just been an hallucination induced by about to go into a seizure, and neither of us believe in ghosts, but that's still a bit too creepy and I'm done with "haunted" stuff for pretty much ever. That basically scarred me. Was like seeing something straight out of a horror movie without the floating body.
And that's why I'm still in SC.
