Monday, March 7, 2011.
The Lundi Gras Party. The Fall.
I was a little hungry and lunch, and found a package of Manda's boudin in the refrigerator. For a vacuum-packed product, it's excellent. And surprising, because my luck with most Manda products has not been good. I microwaved a link. That's the best way to warm boudin, unless you're warming a lot of it. Jab it with a fork five or six times. Nuke it at fifty percent power for eight minutes, on a plate with a couple of tablespoons to spread the waves around. An ideal lunch, at least from a taste perspective. Very spicy, too.
The word is that the city is enjoying near-record, pre-Katrina crowds for Mardi Gras, It certainly looked that way downtown. The traffic was so dense that I gave up trying to get to the Windsor Court, and just parked at the radio station--which is only three blocks away anyway.
Everybody in Mary Ann's family was in the Windsor Court's club room when I arrived after the show. I had to call Mary Ann to let me in; I don't have a room card, and you need that to get to the Club Level on the elevator. She said we'd get a card for me later, but people were waiting to see me in the club room. That decision may have saved my life.
The club room was full of people. There was a little food, and I picked at it. The man who was mixing drinks was pleased to meet me, and made a martini for me. I toasted the families from out of town, all of whom were having drinks and reconnecting. We had another round. Our corner got crowded, and I suggested that we move across the room to a more comfortable, less noisy area with couches. My third martini arrived at about the time I'd been there for two hours.
A subscriber to the Menu Daily came over and introduced himself. He and his brother are the sons of the obstetrician who was in charge of delivering both our children. I introduced him to Jude and Mary Leigh, thinking that was an interesting New Orleans connection.
I don't remember how it came up, but one of these fellows brought up the subject of port. I suggested that we go down to the Polo Lounge, adjacent to the Grill Room. I knew they had a good selection of port there, and we tried one.
Ken Theriot, the owner of O'Brien's Grill in Gretna, happened to be at the bar with his wife. O'Brien's is one of the few white-tablecloth restaurants on the West Bank, and one of the best. Theriot's history includes a stint at LeRuth's and some other major restaurants. We had a lot to talk about.
My fifth drink in three hours was a single-malt Scotch. I forget which one it was, but it wasn't what I wanted. (That was Dalwhinnie, but the bar was out of it.) I didn't drink much of it--a sip or two at the most. I stopped because I suddenly began to feel faint. I excused myself and headed for the elevator. I pushed the button for the floor where our room was, but it wouldn't go. I needed that Club Level card that I hadn't picked up yet. The doors closed. I pulled out my cellphone and dialed the first three numbers of Mary Ann's number.
The next thing I knew after that, I was on the floor of the elevator, surrounded by people looking down at me. Some of them were emergency medical technicians, each down on one knee. They wanted me to suck on a piece of ice. One of them had removed my shoe. My foot looked very funny. They asked me if I could get up, and I tried--but pain shot up from that foot. They told me to lie down.
From then on I was fully conscious. They told me that a hotel guest had found me lying on the floor of the elevator. That when the EMTs checked my blood pressure, it was down to forty. One of them saw the effects of extreme dehydration, and plugged not one but tow IV bags into my arms. They loaded me onto a gurney and asked which hospital I wanted to be delivered to. Ochsner, I told them.
For the next couple of hours, the emergency room doctors at Ochsner pumped me up with fluids, and watched my blood pressure slowly rise. An orthopedic doctor asked Mary Ann and Jude to leave the room, because he and an assistant were going to do something alarming to my foot. They told me that because my pressure was so low they couldn't risk using anesthetics. They asked if I would consent to their relocating my foot in the configuration it was supposed to have. They said it very likely would hurt a lot. Go ahead, I said. It only hurt a little.
"Only hurts a little" is what I have been saying about my left foot since that time. Unless I put weight on it in any direction--then it hurts a little more. The other thing that made it hurt was to walk on it. I am crippled.
After the relocation, the ER staff took X-rays of everything, then put a splint on the foot and surrounded it with a cast. An internist came to get the lowdown from me. It was now something like three in the morning. I was completely lucid, and didn't feel intoxicated. But until my blood pressure was back up to 100 I couldn't sit up without feeling faint again. I told her the whole story, fearing her response as to what it meant. But she said that what happened to me far from uncommon. I said that while having four and a half drinks over three hours was not common practice for me, it was something I'd done more than a few times in my life, rarely with any major effects. Certainly nothing like this.
"You weren't eating and you weren't taking in enough liquids," she said. "Alcohol is a diuretic, and it can run all the water out of you faster than you expect. You didn't have enough fluids in you for your heart to pump."
I knew that. I read an article a long time ago that said that the best way to drink is to have an alcohol-free drink--preferably water--between each cocktail. But. . .
"And your reactions to alcohol or anything else change. You have to be very careful, especially as you get older."
That I didn't know, but it made sense. Certainly with the evidence in front of me.
And so ends the cocktail revolution for me. I didn't drink cocktails with any frequency until Katrina--just wine. I was just beginning to enjoy cocktails, what with all the bartenders around town creating great new drinks and Tales Of The Cocktail becoming so successful and all that. But this was too scary. I could have died on this Mardi Gras, which would have been ironic. I admit to a desire to meet my Maker on Mardi Gras, but specifically the one that will fall on my birthday, in 2035.
