..and if you think it ends with brake cleaner think again.
I spent Tuesday night in the ER in Langley Memorial, massive chest pains and a heart rate around 180 bpm (BP a little low but fairly normal - 120/65). I did the brakes on the back end of a friend's car and within an hour of it being done I was becoming extremely dizzy and disorientated, my body trying hard to go unconscious. I tried to settle down, thinking nothing of the incident, but within an hour of it starting it was so bad I couldn't even talk and it was all I could do to fight to stay standing. Major heart palpitations and I heard my heart stop for a a few seconds twice just shortly before the ambulance arrived, and proceeded to empty my lunch in to a garbage bag when I got in to the ambulance. I spent most of the evening in a mild seizure, legs and arms kicking uncontrollably and unable to do much of anything for myself. The doctor diagnosed it as an anxiety attack and gave me an Ativan pill, and when it did nothing they doped me up with a needle full of Gravol which calmed my heart down to ~116 bpm. Being unable to really communicate with any medical personal they had no real idea of what was going on or what happened, and I just had to go with it. I got released sometime in the early morning and driven home, and was still completely out of it when I got dropped off. I spent the next day sleeping the incident off..
I'm not a pothead by any stretch of the imagination, but I have been stoned on a couple of occasions before (and have eaten pot cookies before with no ill effect) so I do have an idea of what to expect with it. I had a single pot cookie with dinner (burger and fries) but I never got "high", it was far beyond that and it wasn't one bit of a paranoid panic attack and I stayed very clear headed and calm throughout the entire ordeal, even though I couldn't communicate. Maybe I just got ROYALLY ripped, but no way in hell one cookie could do that. If all that happened was that I got the high of a lifetime, then I guess I could be happy with it - and if so, you potheads are complete fuking idiots to put yourself though that sort of sh!t, it was beyond insane. I think maybe it kicked off the reaction, thats all. I haven't had an appetite since, and my body's been way off kilter all week, my chest feels like someone's hit me with a baseball bat. This is the only variable in the situation I'm not sure of, and when the hospital staff heard drugs were involved, I was completely brushed off. I haven't been in for a checkup since because of the long weekend and my scheduling.
The only thing I can honestly pinpoint it on was plasma cutting out the bolts on the rear wheel cylinders and heating up the brake lines to break the lines loose to replace them. There was a fair bit of various penetrating fluids and brake fluid cooked off as smoke in the process, and as much as I tried to avoid it I got a fair bit of it in my face being that I was laying under the car in the direct line of the action. There was adequate ventilation so I never thought much of it.
Any thoughts or previous experience with either pot cookies or burning brake fluid/penetrating fluids? May possibly be the dumbest post of the year here but I am absolutely dead serious about it, I do want to know what happened to me. I ain't dead (that I know of - and if I am this is a cruel joke reincarnating as me again), so for me I'm just chocking it up as a live-and-learn situation for now. LR