Just 99 miles to go

Friday, January 20, 2012

Somthing interesting happened.

First, happy new year.
Had my 2nd surgery for the shoulder, it feels like shit at the moment but I go back to the doc in a week and we'll talk about physical therapy.
To keep myself in some sort of shape I've been using the trainer in the basement while watching TV.

Tuesday night, the 17th, I'm down there pedaling away watching an episode of Shameless.
With shoulder the way it is, I don't evan hold onto the bars most of time. I just sit in an upright position and pedal away.  I'm 30 minutes into my workout ,taking it easy doing about 14mph.
Next thing I know I'm falling backwards and feel a pain in my leg.
I cuss and hobble up and see blood splatters all over the floor.  My leg has got a "huge" gash in it.
It looks like a huge hunk of leg has been torn off and I'm staring at the muscle.
Shit! This is serious.
I grab a "sweat" towel I have and wrap it as tight as I can around the leg.
Hobble up the stairs, and inform the wife she needs to take me to the emergency room.
She puts up no argument.  She's seen me get wounded before and knows that I don't see doctors unless I think my life is in jeopardy.  I grab a belt before we leave and tie it around the towel.
The closet hospital is only 10 miles away or so in Laplata.  I try to act as calm as possible as to not freak the wife out.  She doesn't do well in medical situations.  As we're driving over, she's doing about 60?? Really? I'm worried about bleeding out in the truck and she's doing only 60?

Get to the hospital. She drops me at the entrance. I hobble in half bent over trying to hold this bright pink/red/blue beach towel around my leg.  I'm wearing a nasty ass pair of workout shorts, and a beat up coat thats oversized  to acccomodate the shoulder. I was a sight.
After 15 minutes somebody finally calls us into the "triage" area.  I'm thinking, finally about fuck'n time.
This medical person, I don't evan think she's a nurse takes my temp, BP, and asks some questions.
"On a scale of 1-10 hows the pain?". I'm a man. I've had worse pain.  Its about a 5-6.
"Is the bleeding under control?". "Well, I'm not moving the towel to look, and I don't see a puddle of blood on the floor, so I assume it is".   
She than tells us to go over to this other area and doesn't evan bother looking at the wound??
I didn't realize it at the time, but she was sending me over to the area where the the low lifes go, who have a headache and are too poor to buy asprin so they go to the emergency room.

Finally after a fuck'n hour they call me back.  It's now after 10pm, we walked into the hospital a little after 8.
I tell the wife to stay in the waiting area. If she see this she'll freak.
This little medical assistant (once again, not even a real nurse) has me remove the towel.
He takes one look at it and tells me to put the towel back on it and apply pressure and he'll be right back.
He come back with 2 doctors and 1 nurse (real this time, or as real as this shitty hospital has).
They have me move my leg and decide I hadn't sliced any real muscle.  I think the doc took it as a challenge and said "yeah I can suture that".
They want to flood it with saline solution 1st. So the "not a nurse" sets a bottle of water up and runs a IV tube from it. He than has me sit on the edge of the bed with my leg over  a bucket and hold this dripping IV tube over the wound.
Now, let me set this straight.  He has ME hold the dripping IV over the wound. What is this? A  self service hospital?
After 30 minutes of holding the drip with no one even checking in, the nurse comes in and gives me a tetnis shot, and hooks up some anti-biotics into the IV.
The doc finally makes his way back in, stictches up the 2 inner layers that have been cut.
Looks around and he can't find his "staple" gun.  He leaves to find it.  30 minutes later he actually finds his way back, without the stapler.  Leaves for another 5 and come back.
He finishes and finally bandages me up. BTW, the bandage goes to fall down my leg before I evan make it out of the hospital.

I get home at 2. I'm tired but want to see what happend.
The hole time I'm in the hospital I'm assuming the carbon fibre seatpost had broke.
Nope.  The saddle was held onto the seatpost with 1 bolt, and it snapped.
When I fell backwards my leg snagged the top of the v-brake.

seeya
 

1 comment:

ChrisJ said...

They call me Tommy "Smooth like butter" Garrison