Tochi's Hut

One of the most harrowing experiences in my life unfolded this morning.  One of my coworkers was presenting at a conference.  Two-thirds of the way through the presentation, he fielded some questions. 

As he resumed the talk, all of a sudden, he hunched over the podium, his speech and movement became really really slow.  It felt like when your computer lags so much that it takes seconds to respond to individual keystrokes or mouse cursor movements, only this was happening to a person, which was totally unsettling.  After another few seconds, I knew something was seriously wrong.  I was worried he might collapse, so I rushed up to the stage with another colleague.  The room was eerily silent.  We tried to get my coworker to sit down and take a break.  He was in a slow zombie-like state; he kept on iterating that he was okay and could finish the presentation.  His arms and hands were like ice, but he was sweating profusely.  I asked the conference organizer that we needed to get a medic or EMS here.  It's not pleasant at all to say that when you really mean it.  The organizer broke the session and got some water for my coworker.  We pulled a chair onto the stage for him to rest.  After a little while, he started recovering.  His speech was more coherent, but you can tell he was very shaken up.  He couldn't remember anything from the last couple minutes on the stage.  It was relieving to see that he was feeling better.

After that episode, the show must go on.  I ended up giving the rest of the presentation.  Got a few minutes to skim through the remaining slides beforehand.  Definitely the biggest impromptu presentation to a large audience of my life.  Given the circumstances, I surprisingly did not feel nervous.  I covered everything that needed to be covered.  Took a few questions from the audience to cap it off.

Fortunately, everything turned out okay.  I am still a bit unnerved by the whole ordeal.  At least it's over and we'll be laughing about it soon enough.