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We missed Grandmother and Grandfather's "Easter Shindig" at their church this morning. Nuts. There's nothing more sweet and adorable than watching them sing. They dress alike. It slays me.
High: I have a water-tight excuse to work from home tomorrow.
Low: Owie.
Mmm... Taco Bell.
Anybody got a good comedy they can recommend?
Nuthin.
Same as yesterday.
Storyteller
Bio
Dramatis Personnae
Who I Read
Recipes
March 31, 2002
On the next exciting episode of ER...
So there was a nail. And a lot of blood. And a reeling world, followed by a trip to the Emergency Room. We met Destiny. And and old woman with a head injury had been there for hours. And another, very ill, lady who reminded me of Grandma, which made me cry. I developed a hatred for unfit mothers. And got an X-Ray. And a tetanus shot. And I learned how to use crutches.
And I never got to see The Lord of the Rings.
That's the short story. You want the long one?
Yesterday afternoon we went out for a late lunch/early dinner at Teakwoods. We got home at about 5:30. We were walking up the sidewalk to the door, joking and laughing, when I experienced a sharp pain in my foot. As I was wearing sandals, I figured I'd just stepped on an especially sharp rock from the yard. But when I lifted my foot up, the pain was still there. I looked down. My sandal had separated from my foot, and between them I could see a nail holding my sandal onto my foot.
I cried out, "Uh, Calvin??" He and Marie stopped and looked at me, and I gestured for him to come near so I could brace one hand on his shoulder. With the other hand I pulled the sandal, and with it the nail, away from my foot. It was a 10 penny nail, and it had gone all the way through my sandal and into my foot. The head of the nail was flat on the bottom of my sandal.
I reeled. Pulling it out, I could feel it make its way free. It was long, sharp, and very rusty. The pain, as of yet, wasn't too bad. Calvin released me to run and open the door, and I stared to hop my way to the house. Marie cried out, "Laura, look at the blood!" Sure enough, with every hop I was spraying a stream of blood along the sidewalk. I stopped, and Calvin came back toward me.
I instantly became nauseous. The pain was incredible. Calvin supported me while Marie ran into the house and came back out with a chair so I could sit. Calvin went for a towel. I put my head between my knees as the world reeled and the nausea threatened an embarrassing episode there by the front door. I got off the chair and knelt on the cement, and Calvin tied my hair back in case I threw up. Marie ran for water, and when she came out again she gasped. Calvin and I turned to look, and there was a puddle of blood the size of a dinner plate under my dripping foot.
I reeled again. Calvin applied pressure and Marie cast about for some way to help. Somehow I got back up again and they helped me into the bathroom. We rinsed the foot and applied half a bottle of alcohol.
We marvelled that such a tiny hole could produce so much blood. Poor Marie, as Calvin was tending to me in the bathroom she went back out (she volunteered!) and rinsed the blood off the walk with the hose. She came back in, gagging, describing how the blood reminded her of the congealed skin that a bowl of ranch dressing gets after it's been sitting out for a while.
Ugh.
A rusty nail in the foot automatically means a tetanus shot - an experience not forgotten from my childhood. I couldn't recall at all when my last tet had been, so I called my healthcare provider to see how long they recommended could pass before a shot was imperative. Six hours, according to the RN I talked to.
So, Calvin and I went to the nearby hospital - conveniently five minutes away. He'd wrapped my foot in a bandage, and then an ace bandage, and I put on my slippers for the trip. He dropped me off at the ER door, where a person assured me he'd fetch a wheelchair. Moments passed, and he didn't come back. So, feeling like a complete fool, I hopped my way inside. I was presented with a view of a crowd of glassy eyed, bored individuals, apparently waiting to be seen. I filled out the appropriate form, Calvin joined me, and we sat down.
To the right of me was an old woman with her head wrapped in a bloody bandage and, jauntily, a colorful scarf. Her daughter sat next to her and occasionally got up to see if she could find out how much longer it would be before her mother could be seen. A few rows in front of us was a very fat woman with a three year old girl and a baby that looked to be about three months.
The girl's name was Destiny.
Destiny is a horrible child, and her mother is a horrible mother. The child would approach other people, usually ones with kids her own age, and ask for the toy they were playing with or the blanket they were sleeping under or the Cheerios they were eating. All the other adults in the room cast eyes at the mother, who wouldn't get up off her fat ass to get the kid. All she would say is "Destiny. Destiny, come here! Destiny, listen to me. Destiny. Destiny!" The kid would look at her mother, and turn and walk in the other direction.
Oh. Oh. Hold me back.
The mother wasn't paying attention at all to this kid. At one point, one of the other folks - a man there with his wheelchair bound father - got up to take his father to the bathroom. He left his belongings behind, including the Big Gulp cup of soda he'd been drinking from. Destiny marched right up, looked around to spot if her mother was watching, then helped herself to a long drink. Her mother spotted her and yelled, "Destiny. Destiny, get over here!" Destiny walked a few steps toward her mother, then turned and went in a different direction.
Lord Jesus preserve me. It was like this for the entire three plus hours we were at the Emergency Room.
We were there for a while before one of the nurses called us in to assess the damage. She sent me back out after taking my blood pressure and affixing a bracelet on me claiming I was allergic to theophylline (I am). Another little while passed, and another nurse called me into the same office to take my name, address, and insurance information, and affix me with another bracelet. Calvin and I boggled - why couldn't this have been done all at once? It's a mystery.
Well over an hour had passed, and still the little old lady with the bleeding head hadn't been seen. Calvin and I saw this as a sign of our doom - if a little old lady with a head injury doesn't get precedence, how long would we end up being there??
Calvin had to leave briefly to take Marie and her friends to the mall (again, conveniently five minutes away!), and during that time they finally called the little old lady back, and admitted a 12-ish year old girl who had a bump on the side of her ankle the size of a halved tennis ball.
They finally called in the Bad Mother with Wretched Destiny, the small baby, and another hugely fat, butch woman who was with them. Then, a few minutes later, they called me back.
I hopped from the waiting room to a gurney they had curtained off in the hallway, one of several. I wasn't offered a wheel chair or so much as a crutch, and the nurse watched dispassionately as I tried to keep up. As was what seemed to be my luck last evening, my gurney was next to Fat Bad Mom's and therefore Destiny's. I sat there and listened to them for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only about 10 minutes, until Calvin found me.
Then we sat there and listened to the "oh no you dih-int's" and "girfren's" and once even "swear on the bible no crosses count". We heard the attending doctor stop at their bed, and listened to the symptoms they'd brought the kids in for. We could hear the frustration in the doctor's voice as he diagnosed the children. "Non-specific dermatitis" (diaper rash) for DestinyDestinyDestiny and "a cold" for the baby. He reminded Fat Bad Mom of her duty to change her child when she's wet. She complained that the baby had "scabs in his ears". The doctor looked, and advised Fat Bad Mom that she trim the baby's fingernails.
Good God. Calvin and I were incensed.
We sat in that hallway for another eternity (half-hour), and the doctor stopped by my bed. He asked me to unwrap my foot, and chuckled at the Tweety Bird bandaids we'd applied (hey, they're all we had!). He advised X-Rays, which meant another eternity (half-hour) of waiting. The X-Ray technician arrived to escort me, and I was once again forced to hop hop hop along (heh) to the X-Ray room. Calvin told me later that another nurse observed this process and was affronted that I was not offered help into the room. I could have apparently been wheeled in on the gurney. Well, whatever, I made it. The only pain I suffered was when I got back off the table and accidentally applied my weight to my injured foot.
Another while of waiting, and the doctor breezed by. Practically calling over his shoulder that he'd seen the X-Rays, there were no loose bone fragments, he was getting a tetanus shot ready, and advised antibiotics. Then he was off again.
Calvin and I exchanged long-suffering looks.
And then the fire alarm went off.
It was just a drill, but it took several moments of alarm before the nurses came by and told everyone to stay put. I pity any cardiac patients that were in the facility.
We also got to watch several prisoners go by, escorted by police officers. And some firemen escorting folks on gurneys and respirators.
Our gurney was right next to an open door leading into a room used for more serious cases. A nurse was moving a very ill old woman from that room into the X-Ray room. I heard the poor woman's gasping before I saw the gurney. Calvin gave me one horrified glance - he knew what I was thinking - before I burst into tears. The woman was wheeled by, gasping in a hitching, hiccuping kind of way, that sounded almost exactly how my grandmother sounded in her hospital bed the day before she died. It brought all of that back to me so suddenly that, already strung out as I was, I just buried my face in Calvin's shoulder and cried. When the door to the X-Ray room opened again, I just hid my face on Calvin's shoulder until they passed by us.
Abruptly, the nurse was there to administer the shot and have me sign a few (more!) papers. Calvin and the nurse regaled me with details of how much a tetanus shot hurts, and it *did* burn quite a bit. It subsided quickly, though, and the nurse advised me that I rub the spot a lot (in the *arm*, people), and use the arm as much as I could, to get the medicine to disperse. She gave me what turned out to be quite a potent pain pill, instructed me on the use of my crutches, and sent us on our way.
We got to the ER at 6:10. We left at 9:30. What a suck-ass way to spend a Saturday evening.
I crashed pretty much as soon as we got home. I remember Marie getting home and poking her head into my room to say hi, and then later I remember a conversation with Calvin that had something to do with Pringles. Then I was out out out. Whatever that pain pill was, it did the trick.
I slept until 8:00 this morning, when the pain in my foot woke me up. Lord have mercy, it was awful. I took some Advil and fumbled around under the sink for the stopper so I could soak my foot in the tub. I got off-balance and sat down hard on my butt on the floor, shrugged off the impending tears, and looked some more for the stopper. Couldn't find it. My foot throbbed. My head throbbed. My stomach started feeling nauseated. And I started to feel very, very sorry for myself. So I sat there and bawled. Big ol' hiccuping tears of bad-ass woesy woesy me.
I got ahold of myself after a few minutes, levered myself back upright again, and went back into the bedroom to wake up Calvin. I asked him if he'd go upstairs to check in Marie's bathroom to find the stopper. He looked at me like I was crazy, shuffled sleepy-eyed into the bathroom, lifted up the bathing suits that were on the edge of the tub, and picked up the stopper.
Oh.
He got the water going for me and went back to bed. I soaked my foot for a while, trying to read Amy Tan's "The Bonesetter's Daughter". Then I crutched my way into the living room to cycle through all the channels three billion and twelve times before giving up and going back to bed. I slept from 9:00 until noon, when Calvin got up.
And that's been the excitement of my day. Hobbling into the living room to watch TV. Hobbling back to the bedroom to watch TV. Braving the rocks in the back yard with my crutches and soaking in the hot tub for a while. Finding how hard it is to do laundry with crutches. Listening to Calvin scold me whenever I try to do anything. Enjoying his perfectly wonderful ministrations.
Wah.