**************WARNING!!!************

Graphic photos enclosed involving blood and injury so if you’re squeamish, please have someone hold your hand, get a waste basket, take a Valium or simply skip this post.

Please know I will not in any way be offended if you choose to skip this particular post which I would probably do myself being a trained RN who’s totally squeamish about injuries like this.  My feelings won’t be hurt, honestly.  I just had to document this for reasons which you will see…it’s more than the injury, it’s the story, as always.

First one thing I’ll say is I’m completely ok.  I got my first stitches yesterday!  I’ve never had surgery or anything like that so this was kind of a big deal for me.  Steve said maybe I was just wanting a little attention for myself with John in the hospital and Buddy to the Vet so I guess I manifested my own medical crisis. 😉

I may as well go ahead and first introduce you to Sir Lancelot, my lanceration and then we’ll go back to the beginning.

Sir Lancelot and his Seven Knights of the Round Beer Bottle

Back to the beginning….of  yesterday.

Steve was already planning on coming over for the weekend to attend the Travis Day of Service on Sunday with me and some of the festivities, fix my toilet, help with some other odd jobs, eat good food, grill on the BBQ, watch some movies and basically hang out again.

He was planning on arriving at 11 so I ran out to hit the bank and some quick errands and met him back here just as he was arriving.  I’d already put my spaghetti sauce in the crockpot so our fun weekend was on it’s way.  We stood in the kitchen discussing ideas for the day as I told him the meal options (yeah, food is always top of the agenda all the way down the lineage in my family).  I showed him the three bottles of red wine I had, went to the pantry to grab the rice crackers and saw a dark Henry Weinhard beer sitting looking so innocent on the top shelf!  Wow, I didn’t realize I even had a bottle of beer in there.  Must have been a leftover from when my Dad was last here as he loves dark beer.  I almost never drink it.  (bloat)

Look how innocent he looks, that little sneaky bastard

I was so excited to see it to offer it to Steve who had been wanting a dark beer last weekend in Sedona that I hurriedly grabbed it, along with the rice crackers in the same hand and suddenly…..explosion.  That little bastard jumped out of my hand and suicided right to my faux wood ceramic tile floor shattering in just enough pieces to send a missile of shrapnel right in to my leg.

The weird thing was I felt no pain but instantly blood was gushing and I mean gushing everywhere.  It must have nicked some kind of blood vessel. I’m telling you, it was entirely disorienting to feel basically nothing but see a river of blood rushing down your leg.

I guess they don’t call it hysteria for nothing because, for some reason, Steve and I instantly went in to hysterical laughter.  He said “get over here” and started pulling paper towels to stop the bleeding which flooded right through them in like two seconds.  He then ordered me to “grab one of those towels”.  Now this sounds totally benign but for some reason that moment ended up being one of the funniest of the day.  We both paused and didn’t know which of the kitchen towels to grab, each of us having the same thought “which is the one that’s expendable?”. 

Steve said at the Urgent Care “you’re there bleeding to death and we’re contemplating the value of each towel versus the fact you need a tourniquet”.  I guess it was a “you had to be there”  moment but we had tears all the way to the Urgent Care thinking of the insanity of that.

I stood in the kitchen, hunched over holding that tourniquet to my leg just inches above my ankle (can you picture my position?  In my short skirt?) and said “do I need to go get this treated?”.

Steve “uh, yeah, we’re going right now to the Emergency Room.  Go!  Get in the car, put your leg up, I’m getting your purse”.

Really what would I have done without him?

I hobbled out to the car hunched over, laughing the entire way of what I imagined this looked like. Steve holding my big red purse and keys behind me.  Blood saturating my nice IKEA dish towel, running down my leg and filling my shoe (I’m not kidding this was gushing–it was creepy!).

As soon as we got in the car, Steve goes in to ER mode putting the a/c vents on full blast on me, making sure I had my bloody foot up on the dash and patting my leg, holding my hand saying “stay with me, breathe, don’t pass out, keep talking”.  But we for some reason were in such a fit of hysteria, we laughed the entire way to the Urgent Care.

He ran in with my purse, said “wait out here til I come get you” and handled all the paperwork, sent a nurse out with a wheelchair to get me.  I held the tourniquet which was now just an over saturated sponge, dripping, and sat in the wheelchair with the leg elevated.

She rushed me past Steve at the desk who of course made some kind of hilarious remark causing every one of us to break out in laughter.  The nurse immediately checked out the wound and started cleaning it up.  She asked “what is your pain level?” to which I answered “zero”.  How weird was that?

I asked if Steve could come back and she went to get him.  Just as she opened the door, Steve was walking in “Oh I wasn’t going to let her be back here alone”.

He immediately sat at the head of the exam table where I was half laying/half sitting in this weird twisted yoga pose I was clearly not flexible enough for while Steve held my hand, patting it, saying things like “look at me, there’s nothing good over there, keep the focus right here, right here”.  I had such a hard time sitting still because we were laughing so hard the entire time, including the nurse now, over just silly little quips coming out of Steve’s mouth.

What a vision, especially the hair, right?

I don’t know why it was all so funny, it just was.  At one point he handed me my pink wallet saying “squeeze this between your knees so you don’t give the Dr. a beaver shot”.  OMG, I’m laughing now remembering this craziness in there.

She cleaned up the laceration, about two inches long and, as the Dr. said “all the way to the connective tissue” (which fascinated me as I work with connective tissue) and asked me if I’d had a recent tetanus shot (no, dammit).  She said the Dr. would stitch it up.  It was still bleeding 20 min. later.  I guess I don’t even injure myself half way.

I’m not kidding you though, it never hurt.  Weird!  Until of course the Dr. started shooting it with the numbing anesthetic which hurt like hell.  Steve kept holding my hand and making jokes saying “look at me, look at me” and other things that normally wouldn’t be funny but had me and the Dr. cracking up.  I don’t know how to explain it any better.

Oh and before the Dr. came in to stitch it, I asked Steve to take a picture of the wound because I’d want to see it later.  So he shook his head saying “only you Kath” and took a pic of it saying “no you don’t want to see this now”.

I also made him open the trash can and take a pic of the now discarded IKEA dishtowel, because I’m just that nerdy. I’m kinda sad cuz I did love that dish towel.  Good thing it came in a 3 pack. 😉

And basically everything else around the room.

He called this tray “soy sauce and sake”.  See what I mean?

I asked the Dr. why he was stitching it vs. those butterfly bandages and he said “you need to stitch a would that’s gaping”.  Steve said “you never really want to hear the word gaping associated with your body in any way”.  Again, all of us in stitches, which of course Steve used as a pun throughout the whole ordeal.

Before he left the room I asked the Dr. his name and he said “Lance” and I told him I was naming my wound after him, calling it Lance which when you think of it is kinda creepy but we all found it funny.  After he left Steve said “no, it should be Sir Lancelot” so, obviously, that’s what we went with.  And told the Dr. on our way out.

Sir Lancelot with his Seven Knights of the Round Beer Bottle was born.

Along with stories and memories for years to come.  And pictures of course. 😉

As we drove home, Steve said “first thing we do is you get to get your shower and I’m cleaning up the crime scene”.

That’s the scene of the crime and the remnants of that bastard Henry and you see in there somewhere the actual weapon used.  We never figured out which one it was but convicted them all as guilty and Steve sent them to their garbage can final resting place, nicking his own finger along the way.  (he just refused to allow me to take a picture of it, I guess everyone has their limits).  😀

Actually this is just one area of pooling blood as there was the middle of the kitchen, the towel, my shoe, the car.  Dexter would have had a field day with the amount of evidence involved.

I rinsed my foot/shoe off with the hose when we got back and took my shower and went on the rest.

We stayed in a state of hysteria over the whole thing for a couple more hours rehashing the series of events and making more jokes for example “we’re having a bloody good time!” in British accents and things like that.

Oh and I failed to mention I was in the middle of baking Sweet Potato cookies when Henry attacked me and I did get home from Urgent Care and I did finish my cookies which we enjoyed with milk on our red wine breaks.  😉

Here’s the recipe…they turned out pretty good and believe it or not are really healthy and wheat free!

http://theprimitivefoodie.blogspot.com/2012/03/sweet-potato-cookies.html

Can you believe we ate spaghetti for dinner?

We then stayed up, trying to watch movies but doing more wine drinking and talking than anything.  I think the adrenaline was coursing through us still for hours so we couldn’t even focus on an action flick.

Steve and I stayed up til 2:30 am finally falling asleep on the couch like two dogs flopped over each other with the movie we were trying to watch after about seven starts and stops having ended with our seeing about 45 minutes of it total.  Guess I’ll have another RedBox daily fee.

What would I have done without Steve, seriously?  I’d probably have gone in to denial and tried to stop the bleeding and waited it out.  I sure couldn’t have driven myself anywhere with my leg up.  I guess I’d have called an ambulance.  Ugh.

Steve at some junction of the day, pointed to my injury and said “sometimes life just forces you to stop”.  He knows that better than anyone.

I’ve been doing all this medical crisis intervention all week between Alfonse, Buddy, now myself.  Of course we laughed about me being jealous and trying to make things “all about me”.

In the afternoon I called Alfonse telling him what happened and he kept repeating “Oh no, I’m sorry, please don’t worry about me.  You get better and come when you can”.  Signs of my Alfonse peeking out.  He is still hearing “lots of voices” and feels “depressed” but he is at least connecting to me.  He also reminded me he’ll “be in the hospital for a long time” which relieves me that he’s willing to stay.  I just keep telling him he’s going to get better and we all love him and people are praying for him and he responds repeatedly “I hope so”.  I say I know so and that we are both healing now and we both are going to get better than ever.

I’ll limp in there and see him later today.

My car gets detailed today (how’s that for timing?), I have Steve for the weekend who’s currently arranging for my palm trees to be trimmed and headed to Lowe’s for the fittings for the toilet to fix and told me he was making bacon and eggs when he gets back as I sit here with my leg  up and typing.  I have to say that Sir Lancelot is talking to me today and he’s kinda pissed so guess I didn’t escape the pain 100%.

I don’t know what I did to deserve a Steve but I’m pinching myself that he showed up when he did in the ways that he has.  He’s an absolute angel and I never forget that for one second, believe me.

TGIF everyone and stay away from that rat bastard Henry Weinhard.

He’s a sneaky bugger and he’s not allowed in our tribe no matter how hard he tries to crash the party.