As I was writing the last post and I got to the picture of my day lilies, i remembered a funny story.
It's one of those stories that's funny in retrospect.
It wasn't funny at the time....
Stephanie worked with me for many years.
She was just a little tiny woman........maybe 5 feet tall, very petite, and perky and about 7 or 8 years older than me.
She was italian.
When i first met her, she was in her middle 30's and "dating" a man who was recently divorced after a long marriage. He was in his mid 50's.
Frank never wanted to marry again, but after a few years they began to live together, and a few years after that they bought a home together in a rural part of NJ.
Frank was italian too.
And his mom was still alive.
Josephine, a widow for 20 years by that time, was in her early 90's when she came to live with Frank and Stephanie.
She wasn't your stereotype 90-something year old. She was a spry little woman who was quite independent.
One of Frank and Steph's hobbies was gardening.
They had a huge vegetable garden in their yard, and a huge perennial garden as well.
They canned what they grew, and they even made their own wine.
One thing about italians, and especially the older generation italians is they will try to eat almost anything-
Dandilion salads are a prime example.
I consider dandilions to be weeds. But Josephine thought dandilions were lunch-
One day as she was out back picking for her salad, she came upon Steph's day lilies in full bloom. And she decided that a day lily would make a fine addition to her dandilion salad.
Steph was working, and Frank was out running errands.
Josephine was taking a "nap" when Frank returned.
It wasn't until Steph got home and they tried to rouse her from her sleep for dinner that they realized something was very wrong.
She was hard to wake up-
And when she did open her eyes, she was disoriented.
She didn't seem to know where she was...
She could speak, but she wasn't making any sense.
Worried, they rushed her to the emergency room thinking perhaps a stroke- she had a history of heart issues....
At the hospital, she was admitted.
She was unconscious.
Steph said "coma".
Then began 2 full days of "tests"---
The doctors were baffled.
They couldn't find anything wrong.
But Josephine didn't wake up.
By the evening of the 2nd day, they were asking Frank and Steph if she'd eaten anything different-
or if she'd taken any medication that might have been different-
They went home to search the house to see if they could find any clues.
And in the kitchen, on the shelf next to the window, they found a note that Josephine had left.
Don't ask me why she left that note, but it proved to be the answer to the puzzle the doctors were looking for.
The note said:
lunch: dandilion salad with lily bulbs-
They called the doctor and he asked that they bring a few "samples" of they types of lilies they had in their yard-
As it turns out, the bulbs of some lilies are poisonous.
The particular day lily that Josephine ingested was a powerful hallucinagenic.
She had overdosed. And basically was "tripping"- like you'd "trip" from an OD of LSD.
By day 3, Josephine was awake and seemingly normal, and on day 5 she was released from the hopital under the condition that she'd leave the flowers out of her salads!
Have you ever heard of anything like this???
