Kayla and the Chocolate Bar: My Edible Horror Story

Pictured with my first real friend in Los Angeles--one of the dogs I walked. *This dog is not the one I was watching when the following story occurred.

When I first moved to Los Angeles I did dog walking and pet sitting as a side gig. I was doing a lot of background (extra) work for TV and film at the time trying to get on as many sets as possible to learn and get experience as well as earn my union eligibility. The dog walking and pet sitting was perfect for this because it was flexible which allowed me to be available to do the background work plus I love animals. Win-win.

I was only a few months into living in Los Angeles and still didn't really know anyone and the couple people I did know I didn't know very well but I really bonded with one dog and would walk him around the neighborhood daily. While walking this dog I met someone out walking his dog and struck up a conversation. This person would become a friend but I also started pet sitting for his dog and cats as he was traveling fairly frequently at that time for work. When he was traveling for work he would be gone for sometimes two to three weeks at a time and I would stay overnight at his place with the pets so the pets could stay in their familiar environment. Most all of my pet sitting clients, this one included, would tell me to help myself to food in the fridge or pantry while I was staying there but most of the time I really didn't indulge in that; except for this day.

I was once again pet sitting for this client and hanging out with the pets watching some TV. I was feeling a little hungry and wanted something to snack on. I didn't really have a lot of snacks with me so I thought I would check the fridge and food there for something. In the fridge there was a small chocolate bar—no label, just wrapped in foil. I am a sucker for chocolate so I ate it. This candy bar had about 4 or 5 different squares to it but it was small so I basically ate the whole thing in a couple of bites. It tasted like shit. Absolutely horrible. Disclaimer: I should mention that I knew this person smoked hash (hashish). Now, given that I knew about the hashish and the fact that it tasted horrible, I think somewhere deep down in my subconscious I knew that I had just made a very big mistake but I ignored that thought. Since my tasty treat wasn't so tasty, I settled back in front of the TV with a box of Skittles I had brought with me.

I don't know exactly how long it was before it started but I started to feel really strange, like tingly. You know how you feel kind of tingly when you lose your stomach going over a hill on a roller coaster or in a car? I felt like that but all over and it was constant. My heart started racing in my chest. My heart was beating so fast that I was afraid it was going to literally explode or just stop. Then I started blacking out. The sound of the 911 dispatcher's voice on my phone made me “come to.” I don't remember exactly what I said but I think I told them in a panic that my heart was beating really really fast and I thought I was going to die. Somehow in the panicked and confused state I was in I must have managed to give them the address of where I was staying. I'm surprised I was able to do that since it wasn't my own address. I remember still being on the phone with the dispatcher and then hearing sirens getting closer and saying “Oh, shit. Those aren't for me are they?” The dispatcher responded “yes, those are for you; you should have heard yourself on the phone when you called.” Great, the whole neighborhood was going to be aware and get to watch me in freak out mode.

The dispatcher asked if there were any pets in the place with me and when I said yes they asked me if I was able to go outside to meet the ambulance crew. They sent the fire rescue ambulance so a bunch of firemen/EMS met me outside the front door. Neighbors, some of which I knew, started peeking out their doors or coming out to see what was happening. I tried telling the firemen what all was happening and at this time I threw in “I also ate a candy bar and it tasted funny.” They started asking me questions about my medical history and things that I couldn't remember or I was so worked up that I couldn't answer them so I remember just taking my phone out, dialing my mom's number, and handing it to one of them. Scared the shit out of my mom who answered the phone expecting me only to hear some guy say “This is so and so from the Los Angeles Fire Department.” I know every horrifying scenario flashed through her mind before he managed to explain the situation to her. They must have put me in the ambulance—I don't remember getting in it—but we were off to the hospital. Sherman Oaks Hospital. I would soon find out that Sherman Oaks Hospital is in fact the 10^th Circle of Hell.

Now, I hadn't been in Los Angeles all that long but I was there long enough to know there was kind of a running joke that anytime you called the ambulance in Los Angeles, they would tell you you were having a panic or anxiety attack, no matter what your ailment actually was. A person could probably have severed a limb and it would be “it's okay mam, you're just having a panic attack.” So I do remember in the ambulance on the way to the hospital the fireman checking my heart rate and my breathing and telling me they both were normal and I was probably just experiencing a panic attack. This is when the paranoia started to develop because I knew there was absolutely no way that my heart rate and breathing rate were normal. He's lying to me! Why is he lying to me?

We get to the hospital, I don't remember them getting me out of the ambulance just being wheeled in to the hospital in a wheelchair. A couple of guys from the hospital meet them and bring me into some room to check me in. They asked me to move from the wheelchair to a chair there in the room so I started to try and get up to do that, and I couldn't get up. It was like my brain was telling my legs and muscles to work but they took a holiday and were lounging by the pool somewhere. The hospital employees rolled their eyes at me and moved me from the wheelchair to the chair.

They admitted me to the ER and put me in a bed somewhere. It was one of those deals where it's a big room with multiple beds and they just have flimsy curtains around each bed separating them. That's when things really got interesting. The whole time up until my eventual discharge they told me I was just having an anxiety attack. I tried to tell them about the shitty tasting chocolate bar I ate because somewhere in the scrambled eggs that was my brain at that point, I knew that I had unknowingly eaten an edible and I was probably tripping balls but I didn't flat out tell them I potentially ate an edible.

It was horrible though. Hashish, if you didn't know, is typically more potent than regular marijuana and the hash was really really starting to kick in. I mean, the candy bar had like 4 or 5 squares so a person was probably only supposed to eat 1 square at a time. I ate the whole damn thing. It really was a classic case of cannabis intoxication. I had moments where one of the nurses would be talking to me and I would just go catatonic. It was like my brain was working but my body was not connected to my brain at that time. Then I would have sporadic episodes where I couldn't speak properly and started slurring my words so naturally I was convinced I was having a stroke or as I put it to the nurses “my brain was broken.” Nobody really listened to me when I was trying to tell them what was wrong or what I was experiencing except for maybe this one girl who looked like she really wanted to help but had no idea what to do. They wanted a urine sample to test. I couldn't go. So they would just go off and leave me and maybe come back later to check on me. They told me if I couldn't go they would have to put a catheter in. Eventually, right before they were seriously considering putting a catheter in I was able to give them a sample. Thank God. Then more waiting.

Thankfully, I had my phone with me because that allowed me to eventually orchestrate my escape from the hospital. I remember sobbing on the phone with my mom because I felt horrible and weird and I was afraid I was never going to be normal again, and everything that was happening in the hospital was just so absurd that it would send me spiraling further into paranoia. Apparently, I can get kind of dramatic and emotional when I'm tripping. After crying to her on the phone for a bit we tried to come up with a plan to get me out of the hospital at some point. Mom obviously couldn't come get me since she was 2000+ miles away. I didn't really know that many people in LA and the ones I did know I didn't know all that well but I was able to give my mom phone numbers for one or a couple of them and she was going to try and contact them and see if someone would come get me. Before we hung up, we decided that we shouldn't even mention any of this to my grandma because she would worry. Literally the second I hung up with my mom, my grandma called me (we usually talked on the phone every day) and I promptly forgot everything I had just talked about with my mom. When my grandma cheerily asked how I was I started sobbing again and telling her I was in the hospital and thought I was dying. She prayed with me over the phone and we eventually hung up.

Whenever a nurse would randomly pop their head in to make sure I wasn't dead or whatever they were still telling me I was having an anxiety attack and that I just needed to try and calm down so I was doing my best to do that despite all the crazy physical and mental symptoms I was experiencing. The paranoia though. It was a doozy. Looking back, knowing more about Sherman Oaks Hospital and just reflecting on my whole experience there, I was probably right to be paranoid. I was starting to believe that they had actually committed me to an insane asylum without telling me.

This was only made worse when the Psych Services lady paid a visit to the guy in the neighboring bed. I couldn't see them but I could hear them talking since it was just those ugly curtains separating us. He sounded fairly young and was apparently homeless or it sounded that way to me by things that were said. The Psych Services lady was not very nice saying things along the lines of “your family doesn't want anything to do with you” or “you have no family.” Something like that. She was talking about self-harm and other things. Very loudly and not particularly delicately. I started to get really agitated because the whole time I had been there everyone had been telling me “it's a panic attack, just calm down” and this lady is on the other side of the curtain talking about really deep and upsetting stuff. So naturally I screamed at her “Would you shut up?!? Everyone here is telling me I am having a panic attack and I need to calm down and you are over here talking about upsetting shit! Brilliant move, Kayla. Now the Psych Services lady has zeroed in on me. She finished up with the guy next to me and then came right over to me and wanted to ask me questions. I wasn't about to talk to her—as far as I believed in that moment they had already committed me somewhere and I wasn't about to help them keep me there. She wanted to talk to my mom or someone. I called my mom and told her that this Psych Services lady wanted to talk to her but not to tell her anything because she thought I was crazy and was going to try and keep me there against my will. My mom, who was clued in enough at this point to know I had probably eaten an edible, didn't really tell her anything and she left.

So at that point I was just sitting there in the bed alone waiting again. No one else was around. I think they had been able to get the urine sample and I guess the doctor was just waiting on results but I started to have another emotional episode and outburst. I started crying out “help me, I'm dying!”--SO fucking dramatic. The guy in the bed next to me, the one that by the sound of it was probably in a worse situation than me, started comforting me. He gave me a pep talk. “No one is there but you are okay. You are safe and you are loved...” etc. At the time, this only spurred on the paranoia even more because the whole entire ordeal at the hospital had just been so absurd and now here I am being comforted by one of the last people I would expect. It was really sweet though. I don't know who he was or what happened to him but shout out to him – I hope that he's out there somewhere happy and living a great life.

My mom had managed to get ahold of someone to come and pick me up from the hospital and eventually the doctor finally came in with the results of the urine test. I tested positive for cannabanoids. Yeah. No shit. Hours spent in the depths of hell that is Sherman Oaks Hospital and they ended up doing zero to help me with the symptoms except confirming what my one still functioning brain cell already knew. I got to take home paperwork on cannabis use as a souvenir. I also found out they loaded me up with Ativan when I got to the hospital.The doctor said they gave me one dose of it and it didn't even touch me as far as calming me down so they gave me another round. The Ativan was a souvenir I wouldn't experience until I was discharged. The woman that picked me up from the hospital dumped me in bed back at my pet sitting client's place and that is where I stayed for about a day and a half. I couldn't get up. The Ativan knocked me flat on my ass. Apparently my mom was calling me every 20 or 30 minutes the whole next day trying to wake me up because she knew the dog needed to be taken out to go to the bathroom. This was a very large dog. There was no way I could have taken him out. I would have been dragged around the neighborhood. I think I only answered her call once but I was able to wake up enough that I could contact the neighbor and asked him if he could take the dog out, which he did a couple of times.

That small candy bar cost me thousands of dollars and sent me on an hours-long ride from hell. It didn't even taste good. What did I learn? Don't eat candy from other people's fridges. Hashish? 0/10, would not recommend. Never, under any circumstance, go to Sherman Oaks Hospital (for awhile I wondered if my experience was just a one-off bad experience exacerbated by the drugs but after later reading other people's reviews and experiences plus the news articles about a hospital employee who was sent to jail for getting frisky with a body in the morgue, 10^th Circle of Hell status was confirmed). Always get an itemized bill from the hospital because they often try to charge you for things that didn't happen – even though they never ended up putting a catheter in, they billed me like they did. Also, most hospitals offer cash discounts if you don't have insurance or don't give them your insurance information or some will have sliding-scale fees based on income.

That's my edible horror story.

I had managed to text my friend/pet sitting client's cousin while I was in the hospital so they knew what was going on and so he could go let the dog out while I was in the hospital. When I finally talked to my friend on the phone a couple days later, he said he had heard from his cousin I had gone to the hospital and asked what happened and if I was okay. I told him I had an anxiety attack.

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