BUFFALO, N.Y. — Whether it's for a small party, a tailgate, or a wedding reception, Suzanne Cross loves to create beautiful meat and cheese boards.
"It's just a little small hobby and something to do with friends and family," she said.
Cross first launched her charcuterie business, A Board Above, out of her home during the pandemic.
"Then very quickly took off," she said.
Last year, she opened her first retail location on Orchard Park Road in West Seneca.
"It just became time that we started to grow," she said.
Suzanne never thought the big move for her business would eventually land her in the hospital with a mysterious illness.
"Looking back I was feeling ill for quite some time. I was just not feeling well at all," she said.
Suzanne says months of fighting off fatigue, fogginess, and headaches all came to a head over the summer.
"One morning I woke up and really couldn't get out of bed," she said. "I told my husband, you've got to take me to the hospital."
But even there, doctors still couldn't figure out what was wrong.
"Then that same day, my employee was here working and she called me and said the carbon monoxide alarm was going off."
A fire department inspection found the gas coming from the stove top and convection ovens, right where Suzanne usually stands when she's working. A blood test confirmed her symptoms were from carbon monoxide poisoning.
"That's the other scary thing, is we have carbon monoxide detectors. It wasn't that we didn't have them. They just didn't go off," she said.
"We think just because of the exhaust fan that's I guess that's why. It wasn't built up enough in the air."
Suzanne is back to a full time schedule now, after taking time off to recover and to get the kitchen equipment repaired. Even though she's still processing what she went through, she's working to spread awareness to prevent it happening to others.
"Definitely had some angels looking out for me because I mean if we were, if we were here using those ovens every single day then it would not have been a good thing."
For more information about preventing carbon monoxide poisoning and recognizing the symptoms from the CDC, click here.