Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Klutz award please

We’ve had an, er, interesting month around here in the health area. I guess I needed to make sure that trend continued. Perhaps I’m just a klutz.

10:30 G to bed and cough, cough, cough. Can’t sleep.

12:30 Get up, take some cough medicine.

12:45 Decide some tea might be helpful, caffeine free of course.

12:50 Spill freshly brewed tea on the top of stockinged left foot.

12:50:01 Screech and pull off sock

12:50:02 Admire all the missing skin and the wad of skin pulled aside by the sock.

12:51 Soak foot and moan.

12:55 Pop some ibuprofen

1:15 Call Nurse line for the insurance company who says to go to the emergency room.

1:25 Wake Ben so he can warm up the car for me since there is no possibility of putting a shoe on this foot and it’s below zero outside. He offers to drive me there but I didn’t want to drag Sam out of bed in the middle of the night so I decide to go myself.

1:45-2:00 Wait for triage nurse to come back and then take care of the guy in the wheelchair who is gagging and saying “I’m going to die before they check me in!” Feel fortunate I’m not in.

2:10 Nurse offers to wheel me to the exam area in a wheelchair. Ha! Sitting still makes it worse so pace. Exam area is very small for pacing.

2:15 Watch the drama across the way when security is called to remove a belligerent woman who is with a guy in need of stitches and angry about waiting so long.

2:30 Discover the joys of saline solution soaked gauze pads. Lament lack of camera to take picture of the wound.

2:45 Resident comes in and pronounces second degree burns over most of the top of my foot, first degree near and on the toes.

3:00 Doc comes to check it out. Offers painkillers that would have been helpful a bit back but decline since it’s not good to dose and drive. Doc removes the dead skin, declares the burn “unremarkable” and adds that’s good thing. It’s never good to be “interesting” at a hospital. Doc tells story about his mother spilling scalding milk on her foot. Grateful mine was just tea without milk although milk might have cooled it down a bit. Dresses the wound.

3:30 Nurse finally shows up with discharge papers and painkillers. Provides a little bootie to go over the bandages.

3:45 Get home, take Percoset, email boss I’m unlikely to be at work in the morning. Email under the influence.

Every single person asked what kind of tea it was (Celestial Season Mandarin Orange Spice).
Turns out that Percoset doesn’t agree with me very well and while it did help with the pain, the nausea it caused really put a damper on my day. I’d make a lousy oxycodone addict. Being upright made me feel sick so I lived on the couch for pretty much the full day.

Maybe I’ll provide a picture when I changed the dressing today. Sometime to look forward to.

4 comments:

blackbird said...

You poor thing -
I'll bet that hurt quite a bit.
I don't do well with narcotics either and I don't WANT a picture...

Anonymous said...

Dang Anne--you just had to finish January with a bang, didn't you?? Were you jealous of Sam's visit to the emergency room? Seriously...ouch...that sounds super painful. It reminds me of the spaghetti incident of years ago. Ouch again.

And ditto what blackbird said. No thanks on a picture...lol

Kimberly said...

Poor Anne! That really sucks!

Note to self--no nighttime tea.

When my asthma was undiagnosed, and I was coughing for weeks when I tried to sleep--I found that propping my upper body up helped.

I hope you feel better soon!

Anne V said...

Too bad. I couldn't resist a picture. It's a reminder not to be a stupid ass!