10.07.08 – Watch out for those dangerous hot raviolis!!

“Isn’t there any other part of the matzo you can eat?” (on being served matzo ball soup three meals in a row) -Marilyn Monroe

I had probably one of the most random, but scary, things, EVER happen to me yesterday…. and it was all because of a hot ravioli!!

So, yesterday I was working from home. I started to get hungry around 10am, but told myself it’s not socially acceptable to eat lunch at 10am, and that I could eat at 11am. So, 11am rolled around, and I cooked up some canned ravioli (I know, gourmet 3rd grader meal, right?)

On the back of the can, it says to cook for 3 minutes but I remembered the last time I put it in for that long the raviolis were a little cold still in the middle. So, I put them in for four minutes.

I was so hungry by the time 11:04 rolled around that I couldn’t wait to eat that warm-all-the-way-through ravioli. I scarfed down that first bite and YAWZA was it hot! I decided swallowing the hot ravioli would keep my tongue from burning…. not my brightest idea. And I felt that ravioli burn…all…the….way…down. All the sudden, I started to get light headed! I got up quickly to get a cold glass of water. When I did, the light headedness got worse. I doubled over to wait for the lightheadedness to pass. And the next thing I know, I’m lying on the kitchen floor and my dog is going nuts and licking my face to wake me up!

I slowly get up and realize it’s 11:22 (which means I had laid there for a while) I have a huge knot on my eyebrow, a tooth is chipped and my entire left side of my ribcage is hurting. I start sweating….what the heck just happened??? I kept thinking….I carefully walked into the bathroom to check out the damage my fall did to my face. I look and there’s a white as a ghost pale person staring back at me. I got freaked out and called Pete to tell him what happened.

He rushed home, took me to the emergency room… after 5 hours of being poked, prodded, x-rayed and tested, the doctor said I had syncope (fainting) due to a vasovagal episode. Apparently there’s a thing called a vasovagal nerve that runs parallel to your esophagus. It regulates your heart rate. It can be manipulated by two different things… a pain response (to hot ravioli) or if it’s physically stimulated (by hot ravioli going down its neighbor the esophagus). So, it brought down my heart rate to a very low level, and the doc said that because I’m a long distance runner my heart rate was already really low. That’s what made me pass out. And the knot, chipped tooth and “contusion of the chest wall” are all just results from falling. Can you believe that!?! So, watch out for those dangerous hot raviolis!!! 🙂