Una, Fierra, I hope things are back to well soon. Damn, I’m glad you’re all right.
Best wishes to both of you, from Auckland NZ where it really is winter – and accidents like that are one reason I don’t use heating at all.
Thanks everyone, I’m much better (& apart from feeling ill, much less worried about it than my poor Una was. She definitely had a worse time than me).
I woke up feeling seriously shitty, got ready (very slowly & reluctantly & absent mindedly) for work & then checked out a weird humming noise. Turned out it was coming from the boiler, whose pilot light was orange & flickering regularly (which caused the noise).
My brain said, hmmm…carbon monoxide, good job I’m going out now, I need fresh air, I’ll call someone when I’m at work to get it fixed.
I drove 35 miles in that condition. I don’t know how I didn’t have an accident. I mentioned CO to someone at work, which started a very (very very - never have an emergency in this country, or at least not at my company) lengthy process which led to me going to hospital in an ambulance to be checked over & being incommunicado for 3 hours after sending Una a way too short email so that she wouldn’t worry if she couldn’t reach me, and thus scaring the hell out of her. I’m sorry, love, I really am.
Anyway, I’m home, I learnt that oxygen makes you cold & thirsty (it’s dry & it cools as it expands coming out of the tank), my dogs are fine too after being in the kitchen all day - it always has the window open for fresh air - and the boiler is fully turned off & will be repaired tomorrow or Friday.
I also got a phone call this evening from a policeman asking lots of concerned questions & not sounding upset about being shouted at from America … I think he thought it was endearing? sweet? impressive? that someone would care that much for someone that they’d find out enough information to do that & then insist on me being checked up on.
I can expect to feel headachey & exhausted for the next few days, though, so thanks for the soup & well wishes & woos! & I wish I could recuperate on a beach somewhere with Una … she certainly deserves it after what she went through today.
Hugs to you both…
I’m so happy it turned out OK.
{{Una}}
{{fierra}}
Rose
CO is so sneaky. Glad to hear you are out of danger fierra. And get the heater fixed! And just rest as much as you can.
good grief. i’m glad you and your furry friends will be okay.
i’d be happy to send you a co detector if anthracite hasn’t beamed one over yet.
Oh fierra, oh man I’m so sorry to hear about this. But I am extremely happy that everything turned out as well as it did.
Had me worried. Lots of positive energy and knishes your way, sweetie. 
Take care of you.
I’m glad to hear that you’re ok.
Feel better, Fierra. 'tis indeed good to hear that you’re okay.
Glad to hear you’re OK now, Fierra, and that Anthracite is recovering as well. I lost a friend to CO years ago, also because of a defective heater. Think seriously about replacing the whole unit, please!
CO can be really dangerous. As I understand it, victims of CO poisoning have symptoms much like those of hypothermia. They just get more and more sleepy and mentally confused. Thank goodness you got out of there when you did, Fierra.
I’m firmly convinced that any enclosed habitable area with combustion going on should have a CO detector.
Glad to hear everything is okay!!
{{{fi Una}}}
I agree about the effects of CO. A cousin of mine was poisoned last winter. Thank God she called her daughter and incoherently asked how to turn the CO alarm off so she could sleep!
Be well, fierra.
I am happy to hear you are ok Fierra I hope Una is ok too…that sounds like a bona fide nightmare scenario she went throught there…knowing something terrible is happening, but the only thing she could do was yell at people thousands of miles away through a telephone.
Beats any bad dream I’ve had lately.
Glad to hear things turned out OK. Brushes like this remind one of how fragile that which we hold dear really are.
But now everything has ended happily, I must ask you: you weren’t really using a heater were you? I mean, I know the weather has taken somewhat of a turn for the worse, but I’m still going round in a T-shirt 'cos it’s still mostly over 20º. Now the danger has passed, I gotta say this is weighing heavily on my mind. No, really.
pan
Late as always…
Damn, fierra! Take care of yourself!!
For what it’s worth, I’m very glad that you woke up when you did, and not NEVER!
Man, that’s a scary thought…
Take care of yourself! We need you!
My Fierra is such a little thing - she barely tops 7 stone - that she gets cold without her Una in her bed to warm her up via wrapping the two of us up in a soft blanket, spooning, back rubs, and of course the wild, hot, 4-hour long pre-work sex sessions in the morning…
What? :o
And I second what robby said about having a CO detector. Unless there’s a big difference in price over there, you should be able to pick one up for about £25-£30.
Feel better, Fierra! and do get your heater looked at.
Thanks to everyone that posted later than me.
Astro - it is a scary thought - an uneducated guess by the feel of my symptoms and a handy google-found chart, I think I was at about 30 to 40% of Haemoglobin carrying CO instead of oxygen when I originally left the house & drove :rolleyes: to work. Things start to get really nasty at about 50ppm, with fatal coma at 70ppm.
Kabbes - just “Mostly” over 20[sup]o[/sup]C isn’t enough for me. When most people are in t-shirts, I’m still in sweatshirts. When they switch to them, I’m already in warm wool sweaters. Also, I don’t have an immersion heater. I have to run my boiler for my hot water needs. I’d still have got about 1 or 2 hours of fumes just for that. Plus what Una said - I really love her way off keeping warm :D, so much so that I’m going to continue to let her set the air conditioning too low “by accident” ;).
To everyone that said get a CO detector, I am getting a CO detector (or 3) at the weekend, but it won’t do much good at the moment, I won’t have any heat for about a week. I was going to get one about 5 or 6 years ago, but the only ones they had then just changed colour & a colour change isn’t going to wake you up in time. The modern ones have alarms & I’ll be getting more than one in case of failure.
Re getting the heater fixed - I turned it fully off when I got home (after opening all the windows first). I called my usual plumber (Chris the Gas. Yes, I may have spent too much time in Wales or watching Ivor the Engine. Why do you ask? ;)). He visited today & said that the boiler is officially dead. He’s sending me quotes for a new one and for a new one plus a new control system. The new one will be a sealed unit and will be in the loft, so two less chances for this to happen again. I find out the price on Saturday or Monday depending on the post. He’s going to queue jump me, so I should have it done by the end of next week.
Until then, I shall be boiling kettles of water to wash with and relying on a gas fire to heat the lounge & slowly & inefficiently, the rest of the house. I miss my anthracite coal stove with back boiler that I had in Wales :(. If it wasn’t burning properly, it would go out, not try to kill you. And it was beautiful and kept tea hot & smelt nice. It would look odd though in my modern end-terraced mid 70s house and I don’t really have room for it (nor a reliable local coal delivery that I can phone up when the coal gets low, sigh).