Glad you're OK. Doesn't sound like anything I have experienced with my CFL lamps. How were you using it? In an enclosed housing, or "open air"?

One of the problems with mass migration to CFL's are that the housings intended for incandescent bulbs retain too much heat for long CFL service life. That's a particularly annoying problem when you spend the money on good quality CFL's, only to have them die prematurely from overheating. That actually tilts the cost/benefit calculations you often see regarding the overall cost savings of CFL's versus incandescent.

A guy I knew had a bunch of very cheap CFL's that he used in some ceiling cans and he went through that pack faster than he would have with just incandescent bulbs. That was a waste of money.