An Intoxicating Experience

20 September, 2014

Houston, TX 

One afternoon I began to feel ill, and before too long, I was having trouble breathing. I went to our bed to lie down, and a minute later my wife came in and found me struggling to breathe.

"What's wrong? What's the matter!?" She asked, with a very worried look on her face.

"Don't know…" I replied, gasping for air. "Gotta go to the hospital!" I said. Far from a hypochondriac, my usual response to any sickness was to put some Dr. Tichenor's antiseptic on it, and wait and see if I get better by tomorrow. So my wanting to go immediately to a HOSPITAL was an indication that something was indeed amiss. 

We drove to the Emergency Room of the small, local hospital that was just a step or two up from a large clinic. It was, however, despite its size, a very good facility.

We walked in to the Emergency Room, and my wife, nervously told the attending nurse that I was "intoxicated." 

Intoxicado, in Spanish, means poisoned, and the adjective has nothing to do with being inebriated.

Miriam Webster's dictionary states:

"1 :  an abnormal state that is essentially a poisoning (carbon monoxide intoxication)

 2 a :  the condition of being drunk"

However, the male nurse picked up on the second definition, rather than on the first, and promptly asked her how much I'd had to drink.

My wife answered: "He doesn't drink; he's intoxicated!"

The nurse smiled and walked away for a few minutes. I asked my wife why she used the word "intoxicated." She told me that she had used the right medical term for my condition, and why trained medical personnel don't understand correct terminology was beyond her.

The nurse's name was another matter. It was Coulon - a name found mostly in Louisiana's Cajun country, and is of Canadian-French origin. But it's meaning in Spanish is "big-butt," and is really not a nice-sounding word in that language. 

I languished on this gurney for several minutes, my wife musing over the nurse's surname, and me still struggling for each breath. 

The nurse returned with a lady in a white coat, a stethoscope around her neck. She spoke to an ER assistant nearby, who had a clipboard in her hand: "Put down for doctor Payment," she requested.

"Hey, man!" I spoke up, "You haven't even SEEN me, and you want your MONEY already??"

"Oh, you don't understand," said the nurse, chuckling a bit: "The doctor's name is 'Payment'."

"So exactly how much have you had to drink?" Dr. Payment asked.

"Nothing!" I replied, annoyed. "I ate something I'm allergic to; that's all!"

Unbelievably, several others asked how much alcohol I had consumed! It took a few minutes of rigorous explanation before they came to the conclusion that in fact I had drank no alcohol. Thank goodness that was finally out of the way!

I could have died of anaphylaxis trying to explain to these folks that I was intoxicated, but not drunk. 

Lesson learned here is that, although the MEANING of a word might be one thing, the connotation might be something totally different!

I wonder had I gone to the hospital while drunk, and said I was intoxicated, would they have thought I was poisoned?