It is certainly a story I've had tell many times - How I Ended Up In A Hospital in São Paulo. So here goes.

I was to be married to Solange in August 2006, and so I setup my bachelor party in São Paulo with a few friends in July 2006. The partners in crime were Key (Kyung Sun), Austin Young, Augusto, and Thomas, my doctor friend from Las Vegas.

I took a long run around Lagoa the night before because I knew that I would not be getting much exercise during my 3 day bachelor party. The next day, Solange was scheduled to go travel to her mother's place in Goânia, but she had some problems with her plane reservations. Long story short, I spent most of the following morning, running around Rio straightening her plane reservations. I barely had time to catch my flight to São Paulo.

When I finally got to São Paulo, I ran to a final conference call, and then we were off the races going to many of the favorite night spots in São Paulo. Note: by this time, I had not eaten for more than 24 hours. I was wired, and I decided to drink water.

It all hit at once, and I went into convulsions. My ailment is called hyponatremia. Since I had a doctor with me, they took me to the hospital, and treated me for a lack of sodium in my system. My friends went home, and thought I would be fine.

The next day they came to find me in a far worse situation. I was in a coma. Two days later , when I finally snapped out of it, I had a broken arm, amnesia, pneumonia, and I could not talk. Worse yet, no one knew what had happened. There was nothing in the hospital records nothing. Still to this day, I still don't know what happened.

My friends freaked and took me to another much more expensive hospital. It is there where they gave me two blood transfusions, and they mended my arm with five screws and two plates. Then my friends finally called Solange who had become a non stop crying machine.

My brother and my mother came down to see me in São Paulo. Then my friend William Wang came down on business and also visited me at the hospital. He is the one that snapped this photo.

All's well that ends well. I went back briefly to the US and soon returned to Brazil to marry Solange. She then became pregnant, and as of this writing, we are very happily married.