Thursday, October 09, 2008

Clean underwear (and a semi-funny post about how I idiotically hurt my foot)

You guys ever heard the saying about wearing clean underwear because you never know when you might be in an accident and have to go to the hospital? I've never understood why that's the reason why you should wear clean underwear. Is there any reason why you shouldn't wear clean underwear?

Yes, I'm going somewhere with this.

If you haven't been following my tweets, you might not know that I stepped on something sharp in my kitchen yesterday. I didn't know what it was, but it hurt like Hades and my foot started bleeding pretty badly. I put pressure on it, which slowed the bleeding a little but didn't stop it.

A half an hour went by with a Kleenex plastered to my foot and I had an epiphany. The night before, a piece of glass had chipped off a cup. "We shouldn't stack these cups," I told Paul, "because they can chip like this." I didn't see where the glass had fallen and I didn't think too much of it.

Yep, that's what I had stepped on. And as I put pressure on my foot, it was just digging itself in more and more. Ouch. Paul came home and looked at it. "I have bad news," I told him. "I think I stepped on that piece of glass from the cup. And I think it might be in my foot."

"Crap," he said. "Okay, let me look for it on the floor. Maybe it's not in your foot." He got down on his hands and knees and poked around on the floor. He got out a flashlight. I sat on the couch and winced.

"Where's the cup?" he asked, to which I replied, "Why does it matter?" "Because," he told me, "I want to see how the piece of glass will be shaped." So I pointed to the glass and he picked it up. He ran his finger along the rim. He cut his finger. (Don't tell me you didn't see that coming.)

I was in enough pain that I didn't throw a fit when he told me we were going to an after-hours clinic. I didn't put on makeup. But to answer the question you're probably asking yourself: Yes, my underwear was clean.

The nurse ordered three x-rays of my foot. The x-ray tech made me laugh, which made me feel better. Then the doctor visited me and told me I had to get the glass out. I thought that was a given, but apparently I was wrong. "You know, if it were a little piece and this deep in, say, your thigh muscle, I wouldn't bother," he said, holding his hands about eight inches apart. "Trying to get it out would cause much more trauma than just leaving it in there. People, you know, get shot with shotguns, and they have, like, five or six pieces in them and their body just walls it off. But because this is in your foot and you're going to be walking on it all day, I need to take it out."

And that was his preface as to why I needed minor surgery. I asked them to get Paul out of the waiting room to hold my hand -- possibly a mistake because Paul comes very close to passing out at the sight of needles, scalpels and whatnot.

But here's where I'm going with this. My underwear was absolutely, positively clean, but I looked like hell. No makeup. My toenail polish was chipped. And I really needed to shave my legs.

I'm on hydrocodone and an antibiotic, and my foot feels so much better. But the hydrocodone knocked me out for most of the day, meaning I still haven't shaved my legs or painted my toenails. It's all cool as long as I don't get into another accident.

... But at least I'm wearing clean underwear if I do.

5 Comments:

Blogger StargazerGirl said...

Why do I find leaving a piece of glass in your body disturbing anyway??? I don't care where it is!!!

Happy sleeping on hydrocodone. And I'm totally going to pick on Paul about passing out at the sight of needles, scapels, and so on.

10:23 PM  
Blogger De said...

I figured Paul would whip out some kind of handheld microscope to examine the glass.

8:45 AM  
Blogger Johanna said...

Ouch!!! That's horrible, Kate.

2:15 PM  
Anonymous paul said...

de: i REALLY wanted to.

The gore doesnt bother me - the internet has made sure of that. Its the cutting part that makes me quesy.

5:35 PM  
Blogger angrygrrface said...

Plus, dirty underwear is gross?

Glad to hear you got it out!

12:54 PM  

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