Hey all,
Just a quick update. I’m currently sitting on my red corner from a sectional with my feet on my improvised ottoman (a basket with my magazines in it with a brown floor pillow on top). Darcy’s new favorite spot is on the ottoman. I’m trying to finish Mandela’s autobiography, which I’ve been reading for what seems like forever now. It’s very interesting, but I still get distracted.
My foot is bandaged because I drove a knife into the bottom of my foot last Tuesday evening. It’s terribly ironic, because I was in a very good frame of mind, quite happily working on an art project. I was determined to work on it, even without a workshop. I was worried about the wood floors and also about using the knife carefully. The first set of cuts I made, I did very carefully, but then I tried to mount it to the wall and it was proving more difficult than I could handle. It’s a six-seven foot tree branch I want to use as the basis for an improvised headboard. The brackets I got were not long enough and I couldn’t balance the weight of the branch while trying to attach the brackets to the wall and/or the wood (I tried premounting the brackets to the branch and also starting with one on the wall). I sheared off three screws–one with the new drill I got and two with just my arm power and the screw-driver.
So I suppose I was frustrated. I decided to take off this big knot at the back of the branch (based on how I decided I wanted to mount it–I made the decision visually instead of seeking out the side that would lay flattest against the wall, unfortunately). I sat down cross-legged and started to chip away at the knot. Instead of the tiny careful cuts I made just a few minutes before, I was doing an unsafe hackjob. And the knife slipped and embedded itself in the bottom of my foot. It looks a bit like the following picture, though I bought it for only a couple of bucks at the hardware store.
I sat on the floor and sobbed because it was such a stupid thing to do. It didn’t actually hurt yet. I was just so mad at myself and at the evening I was about to have and the week that I had ruined. I could have called 911, but I decided to try one of my new friends first. I sat with my thumb pressed against the cut and called the first person. The conversation went a bit like this:
Roses (catching breath so it doesn’t sound like she’s crying): Hey there, what’s up?
B: not much, how are you?
R: Oh, pretty good. What are you up and B2 up to tonight?
B: Well, B2 is out right now and going to have dinner later at an old friend’s house and I’m going to go do my radio show and then I have band practice.
R: Oh, ok. I’ll try somebody else.
B: Yep, sorry. Bye.
He told me later I’m supposed to lead with the whole “I’ve got a massive gaping wound” bit. I know, I know. But I really knew this was going to ruin the evening of the lucky person who answered the phone. Cause these are good folks and would try to help me. Second person didn’t pick up and I didn’t leave a message.
Third person was just leaving work and dropped everything and rushed to pick me up. She was completely awesome and wonderful and stayed with me for the whole ordeal. I wrapped my foot in a clean pair of undies, put a hair tie around it to stay put and shoved it into an old gym shoe (came home later to smooshes of blood where I hobbled through the house. Thank goodness for hardwood floors. All the dried blood came up when I had the energy to clean a couple days later). By the time we got to the ER, blood was leaking out of the gym shoe, but it did at least cause the bleeding to stop for a bit.
I was at the ER for about 4 hours. After they removed my MacGyver bandage and scolded me about how dirty gym shoes are, I bled continuously for the first 2 or more hours. It was dripping down onto the floor and finally a nurse came over and wrapped two compress bandages on me and put a big towel thing under me. When I soaked through both bandages and again started dripping on the floor (despite moving my foot around on the towel), nurses would come and stare and move on. Finally the jokey nurse returned and sat a big huge gauze pad next to me that he said was for major trauma patients and could hold gallons of blood. But it just sat there for awhile till he decided to put it on me, too. It didn’t stick like the compress bandages and I soaked through that one fairly quickly too.
They finally stuck me with some morphine, waited for that to set in, then stuck my foot with numbing agent. The prick hurt and then my whole body fluttered. I got really dizzy and an icy cold breeze blew over my body. I guess I have a reaction to that numbing stuff–not an allergy, just the way that some people react to it. After that reaction settled down (my pulse had dropped way down), the nurse practitioner started to sew. A couple of the stitches, I couldn’t feel a thing, but then she got to a place that wasn’t numb. Ahhhh! It’s not numb. She asks me if it hurts. Well, duh, that would be the closing eyes, stiff body thing I’m doing. But I’m such a proud dumbass, I can’t say “it hurts.” Did I mention I’ve been laughing and joking and asking questions of my friend (got part of her life history that night) the whole time up to this point? So I figured the change in demeanor would be enough to communicate my discomfort. But the nurse kept saying, “I don’t know if it hurts, you have to tell me!” So she gave me more of the numbing agent and the reaction wasn’t as bad this time. She got another couple of stitches in, before she got to the callous on the bottom of my foot. I’ve had serious ugly callouses on that foot since my ankle surgery. It broke two or three needles. And the numbing was wearing off again by the time she got the final stitch in there.
I thought for sure I was going to feel horrible the next few days, but I really didn’t. I didn’t have to fill the serious pain medication prescription she wrote me. Advil was enough. I slept the whole day Wednesday. Spent part of Thursday at a work retreat. Spent Friday trying to work from home and also waiting for the internet guy to show up.
Part of the reason I haven’t written as much is that I haven’t had the internet at home. Hopefully some of my good habits will translate over now that I have a source of easy entertainment again. We’ll see. I’ve been watching a lot of tv since I got the internet, but that is in part b/c I was trying to be “good” and lay around and rest my foot. Except that ‘good” to me says active. At least I got the place somewhat cleaned up. I still have a bucket of nasty sink water. My sink and my neighbor’s sink was stopped up for about 5 days till they came and fixed it. And evidently decided to leave a bucket of nasty sink water–the same day I hurt my foot. Haven’t wanted to try to move it to the bathroom to empty it into the toilet till I’m steadier on my feet.
Anyway, was gonna tell you about the new job too, but I suppose that that is a long enough post for today. 
Hang tough Sunshine. This too will resolve.