Tales of the ER

How was your Saturday evening? I hope it was better than mine, which you can probably surmise was spent in the emergency room.

Since I’m relegated to enforced rest at the present time, this might be a longish and rambling post…sorry in advance!

Here’s a little background to set the scene:

Lately, I’ve become obsessed with houseplants. It started gradually and before I knew it, I was fully engulfed in collecting, rescuing, propagating, and growing everything from Fiddle Leaf Figs to Calatheas to flowering cacti, and finally, MONSTERA. Yes, I’ve gone completely bonkers for Monstera.

I bought a giant specimen and had finally found the perfect feng shui location for it to thrive, but noticed that it could really benefit from some support.

I ordered a set of moss sticks from Amazon. They were due to arrive yesterday in the late afternoon and as I DO, I kept refreshing the tracking updates.

It was raining heavily when I finally heard the delivery truck.

I was so excited for those stupid moss poles that I FLEW down the flight of oak steps to the front door, wearing my favorite warm but very SLIPPERY socks; a gift from the original Angel Boy…

Without warning, because of course that’s how these things happen, I slipped and fell HARD. I mean really hard because I had been running, so my entire body weight slammed into the last few steps.

As I do when I hurt myself, I sat there for a minute to triage the damage, upset with my stupidity and carelessness, When I ascertained that I hadn’t broken any major bones like a hip, I got up, went outside and picked up my package.

At that point, I had no idea what really happened.

The only part of me that had sustained the major hit was my left shin and I got an ice pack and lay down on the sofa. The pain was intensifying and when I lifted the ice pack, I saw a lot of blood seeping through my leggings.

WARNING: THE REST OF THE STORY IS KIND OF GROSS, not for the faint of heart.

You know how you have a feeling of impending doom? That’s what was going on with me.

I went to the bathroom, and before I looked at my leg, I brought out all my first aid stuff; gauze, tape, compression pads — just in case.

I washed my hands and gingerly and gently pulled up the bottom of my leggings and almost fainted (or threw up) at what I saw.

My leg looked like someone had slashed it with a hatchet and there was an open, gaping wound on my shin, all the way down to the tibia. I saw muscle and BONE. For real. Definitely not for the faint of heart, but I was trained by a wonderful nurse, and knew what to do.

I didn’t bother cleaning it at this point. I ripped open a large sterile gauze square with my teeth because I needed BOTH HANDS to close the two sides of the laceration. I did the same with the tape. After I placed a compression pad over the gauze and secured it with more tape, I knew this was no easy fix and I’d have to endure a visit to the emergency room.

I drove to the better of my two ER options, walked up to the desk and told them that I had a deep laceration that needed to be sutured.

They actually took me to a room immediately. I’m grateful that it was a slow evening and not very many people were there.

From the moment I arrived, everyone was helpful and lovely. Also since it was a slow night, many people came in the room to look at my leg. They praised my initial bandaging, and made jokes about why didn’t I sew it up myself, since it looked like I knew what I was doing. At a time like this, humor is a great quality to have, and I enjoy a good joke to lighten the atmosphere.

One person said she came in to see it because of how calm I was when I explained why I was there and she didn’t expect to see an eight-inch gash that must have hurt like hell, but I told her I’m always calm in the face of disaster and it didn’t hurt that much. (It does now, though. A lot.)

Because of the severity of the wound, I needed to have an x-ray to rule out any damage to my tibia before it got sutured. Luckily, my bone wasn’t compromised; no breaks or chips or blood vessel issues.

Other parts of my body are bruised from the impact, but my poor leg took the brunt of the fall from these beautiful but apparently now deadly oak stairs…no one has ever slipped before; I guess it was my lucky day, right?

More people came in to observe this AMAZING trauma surgeon work on repairing the laceration. His wife was a doc too, an ophthalmologist, and we chatted about medical things while we waited for the suture cart and he determined how he was going to sew me up.

After the lidocaine injections, I couldn’t feel a thing, so I watched him work. It was kind of like an out-of-body experience. I probably bothered him with a million questions (like I always do) but he also taught medicine and he was patient and pleased to provide me with detailed answers.

A wound like that (think sharp hatchet splitting wood) needs layers of internal sutures as well as the exterior ones.

I had a total of twelve sutures and a few internal ones. After finishing the job, the doc told me how very lucky I was, because if the wound had been even a couple inches to the right, tendons and muscles would have had to be surgically repaired.

The tech came back in to dress my leg, adding about fifteen Steri-Strips between the sutures.

The nurse took a bunch of pics that are too graphic to post here and I know it’s going to leave an ugly scar, but I don’t mind because it’s a constant reminder to NEVER again wear those slippery socks on those oak steps. EVER. NEVER. Lesson learned.