Accidentally poisoned?!

Yeah, so that happened. On Monday, I went out to ride and when I was walking around the barn, I smelled this really bad, chemical smell. Hard to explain, but it was kind of like burning metal mixed with a meth house? I’d never smelled it before.

A few of the girls were around and I was going to ask them if they smelled it, but it kind of wafted away and I forgot…Until a TERRIBLE headache slammed me. Like, unreal bad. I thought I was going to puke. It started so suddenly in the back of my neck that I thought I had tweaked something in my neck, and then moved up through my neck to my sinuses, which were throbbing really painfully. God, it was so bad.

I didn’t connect the dots though, that bad smell= chemical poisoning.

I grabbed two Advil, and went to ride Oats. He was being super great considering I had this awful headache, and by that time my nose and eyes started gushing…I warmed him up, we hopped over the x-rails set up in the ring, and then I just jumped off. I couldn’t handle it anymore, and the awful headache wasn’t lifting.

I was kind of starting to stagger a bit and was having trouble focusing. Things were not good.

I put Oats away and made it back to my car, and then home. Once home, I went straight to bed and lay down. I told my husband that I was NOT feeling well, and took 4 more Advil for some, if any, relief. It was soooooo bizarre?! The Advil did the trick by an hour or so, and I was able to be normal again, but still…WTF?

Why can’t we do this instead? Photo courtesy of Nicole Gibby.

The next day, I even had the remnants of a rebound headache from whatever poisoned me the day before, but thankfully it was easily remedied by like, 1 Tylenol, not 6 of them. Jesus! So, I called the barn owner and left a strange and cryptic voicemail saying there was this weird smell, that made me really sick, that I wanted her to be aware of. It was really windy that day, and what if it happened again- if a neighbour was burning something really toxic and the fumes carried?

Anyways, I went to my dressage lesson with some trepidation yesterday. Poisoning, a rebound headache, returning to the scene…What was going to happen now?

Happily- nothing!

I had a tough but reasonably responsive dressage lesson with Karen in the indoor. It was cold again and pretty windy, so I didn’t feel like riding outside. We worked on some pretty intense walk work (which Oats and I struggled with), and then walk-canter work (again that we really struggled with), and on to some pretty decent trot.

All in all, a good night. But man, what a way to start the week eh???