Imaginary Toxic Shock Syndrome *True Story Sunday*

Hey guys, I've thought about doing a new thing where every Sunday I post a half-throttle true story. Something from my past which is true that happened a while ago. I may or may not stick with this, but I'm gonna do it today anyways. So the story that I'm gonna tell today is about, it's from my dating life, my years of dating life. I had a knack for meeting and, oh boy, meeting and being attracted to some very strange, very damaged women. I think my problem dating was that I was always trying to save people and that's the wrong way to go. That's the wrong way to start a relationship. You gotta find someone who is just fine just the way they are. Anyways, I was dating this girl. We went to the same church and we had been going out for a little while and things were going okay. We liked each other, but Thanksgiving was coming and she didn't have any family anywhere in the area. So I was feeling some pressure to invite her to Thanksgiving dinner with my family and that was like, in my mind, taking it to the next level and I wasn't sure that I wanted to do that with her, to become more serious and have her over Thanksgiving dinner. It was like letting everybody know that, yeah, this could be serious. So I was going back and forth whether or not I should invite her to Thanksgiving dinner and she had a place. I don't want this to get confusing, but she had her own place. She had a condo type place and she had a roommate who lived there and her roommate had had a fairly rough life and she was a little bit strange because of it, a little bit different because of it. Go. Go. She was very poor. I don't know what her backstory was, but things had been rough for her and the church actually paid this roommate's rent for her and the girl that I was dating, she felt very strange about that. She often thought about just letting her stay there for free so the church didn't have to pay. She was a little bit torn there and that's okay. I think that's understandable. Remember that, okay, for later in the story. So this girl I was dating, she was going to school, like to massage therapy school and she graduated and her and some of her friends from school went to Vegas for a weekend and this was in the middle of winter and they got back. They got back to Utah and she called me. It was like, I don't know what time it was. I was working full time though and it was late, maybe nine o'clock and I was probably in bed. I was working as an electrician and I like to go to work fully rested. So I got out of bed. I'm thinking, okay, she got back from this trip and she wants to see me. This could be good for me, right? So I pull myself out of bed. I drive like 20 minutes to where she lives and she has an Xbox, which is one thing I really liked about her. She had this Xbox and Halo 2 had just come out and I was like, okay, I'll just be on the Xbox. Come, you know, come play a few rounds with me and almost as soon as I got there, she started complaining that she had stomach pain. Oh, my stomach hurts. I don't feel good and I'm thinking, if you don't feel good, why did you call me over here? You know, she's trying to talk to me and I'm going, the world is about to end and if, and if someone isn't here, if someone isn't here to fight back the bad guys, earth will be overrun. Like she wasn't getting that and that, and that bothered me. But you know, what really bothered me is that she was sick. Why did she invite me over? She was sick. She should have just gone to bed because I was already in bed. So I'm playing Halo and her and her crazy roommate are talking, like whispering in the back and finally she comes and sits on the couch next to me and she goes, okay, I've got, I've got to tell you something. And I'm going, okay, what is it? And she says, I think that I have toxic shock syndrome. And I, and I look at her and I'm looking at her pupils and I'm looking at the, the tone of her skin and I'm going, you don't look like you have shock to me. And she goes, no, no, it's toxic shock syndrome, which I'd never heard of before. But maybe you haven't either, unless you're a woman and you've read the warning label on your box of tampons. So she proceeds, this girl that I'm dating proceeds to tell me that when a girl leaves her tampon in too long, that the blood can get messed up and that person can get toxic shock syndrome. So basically her crazy roommate had put it into her head that she had this. And now she was like panicking. And I'm like, okay, I'm trying to be adult about this. I'm trying to be the grown up here. And I'm thinking, all right, um, maybe she has it. I don't know anything about it. I've never even heard of it before. Um, my word, this isn't, I'm not going into, I'm not going into downtown. Everything's jammed up that way. So I'm trying to talk to, I'm like, okay, what do you want to do? And she goes, well, I think I should go to the hospital because you know, it's, you can die from it. And I said, well, do you, do you have health insurance? By this time it's fairly late at night. It's midnight. Nothing's open, but the emergency room. And I asked, do you have health insurance? No, I don't. I don't have any health insurance. And I go, well, then you sure as heck don't want to go to the emergency room. And she's telling me, but I don't want to wake up dead. Okay. Okay. This is finally, uh, I tried to talk her out of it for a little while, but finally I said, okay, you want to go to the emergency room? Let's go to the emergency room. Yeah. And on the way on the drive there, I'm, I'm trying, I'm still trying to talk her out of it. I'm like, how do you think you're going to pay for this? Because I know that she's not, you know, she just graduated from this little school thing. It's not like she has this great job or she has, uh, you know, money to pay for an emergency room visit. I don't know what you know about healthcare in the United States, but basically if you get So she doesn't want to wake up dead. We start driving to the hospital and, uh, she I'm asking her, how do you think you're going to pay for this? And she says, well, I was thinking about asking the church to help. This is the same girl that was always so bothered about the church paying for her roommate's rent. She was gonna, she was gonna, you know, let her live there for free. And, uh, I'm just like, okay, she's off the deep end here. She has gone off the deep end here. We go to the emergency room. She gets checked in. I sit there for like three hours, uh, like 3am finally rolls around. This is, it's been a while, but I'm guessing it was, it was very early in the morning by the time we got out of there. Um, they do a bunch of tests and the doctor comes in, they call me in and the doctor opens up his chart and he glances at it and he goes, you're healthier than I am. Turns around and walks out. Absolutely nothing was wrong with her. And so I, um, I went dropped her off, went back home and then had to go to work the next day. And I was of course exhausted because I was up all night for no reason at all, because this girl had imaginary toxic shock syndrome, ITSS is what it's called. So I was, I was annoyed. I was not annoyed, but I was like, that was the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me in my dating life. What the hell was that all about? So the next, the very next night, um, I had plans for a little nerds night in, this was back when the Xbox was, when I played Xbox and you would get together at people's houses and have like Halo tournaments and stuff. So she played and, uh, I was over there playing and she called me and I was like, well, come on over. And we, and I have, I had of course told everybody, like all my buddies what happened last night about her. And so she shows up and everybody's being weird. I shouldn't have told them, I guess, but it was, it was weird. Um, so she's there, we're playing and then, you know, it was like late, it was late. You know, we played nerds night in, they usually go long. So I was up late again and I was just really tired and wanted to go to sleep. And the next day, this two days, I was up very late. The next day she sends me a text message and she's like, Hey, do you want to come over? Um, I had problems with my knee and she's like, Hey, I'll do, I'll do some massage therapy on your knee. And I was like, you know what? I'm really tired. I just want, I'm just going to stay home and go to sleep because I had, you know, I had two nights out that were really late and, uh, I just need to catch up on some sleep. It was being completely honest, but I was a little weirded out by what had happened. So it wasn't like I had turned and was running away from the situation or the relationship or whatever we had, but I was taking a step back. Um, definitely taking a step back. So I go to sleep and when I wake up the next morning, there are like, I can't remember how many text messages that she had sent to me and each one was a little more annoyed that I wasn't replying, but I had fallen asleep. I told her I was going to sleep. Um, basically the, the, the message said, um, boy, it's so long. It's been so long. It's something about don't worry about Thanksgiving or any other day for that matter, happy holidays and have a nice life. And I kind of looked at it and shrugged and said, thanks for doing the dirty work. I mean, I, uh, I wasn't planning on breaking up with her. I was trying to, I was trying to be cool about what had happened and be the grownup. And I, and I was still thinking about inviting her for Thanksgiving, but because I was tired and was honest about it and said, I'm just going to go to sleep. That to her was like the biggest blow off. It was rude. Um, I was being inconsiderate. The guy who had driven her to the hospital and spent the entire night in the emergency room was being inconsiderate. All of a sudden I was just like, thanks for doing the dirty work. And, uh, never, I may run into her once or twice after that, but we certainly never went out again. Anyways, that's a half throttle true story about my crazy dating life. Um, if you want to hear more stuff like that, just drop me a comment below. I've got motorcycle adventure stories that I can tell. I've got, um, more dating stories that I could tell. So drop me a message in the comments and, uh, you know, I'll tell some stories.