I told you how awesome my fourth of July weekend was, what with the fabric and pattern finds, but what I haven’t mentioned yet was the conclusion to that weekend. Technically, I suppose my luck ran out after the weekend and just before the first of the work week.

Tuesday morning, July 5th. The day before my sweet boy’s first birthday. I buckled him into his car seat to take him to the sitter (my mom) so I can go to work. But damn. I forgot the container of creamer to take to work, so I ran back in to get it. Back outside I remember that we’d been working on my dad’s house over the weekend and the shop vac with nasty gunk in it was in the back end of my car. So I open the tailgate and put the shop vac into the garage. Come back around and pick up the creamer and pull the tailgate shut… and that’s when I was all of a sudden on the ground wondering why my teeth hurt so bad.

Yeah. Genius. Ow ow ow. Holy shit, my head hurts…. I crawled into the car from the passenger side and fished around in my purse for my phone while holding my head with the other hand and dialed Chris and told him to come home. NOW. I knew he would think I was over reacting, but I was really proud of myself for not crying and having the presence of mind to actually call him before collapsing in the driveway. That’s when the baby started screaming. That’s when I noticed my head was gushing blood.

Somehow I managed to get a towel out of the kitchen and put it on my head. And all I could think of was the pain. And that I was very lucky that the baby was already buckled into his seat. He was pissed off about it, but I knew he was safe. I was also really glad that I didn’t get any blood in my Coach purse. Yeah, I have my priorities straight. Really.

I think Chris was pretty shocked when he pulled up to the house a few minutes later to see me bleeding and rocking in the driveway saying “oh shit oh shit oh shit” over and over again.

Next thing I knew, we were in the ER and they were asking me if I blacked out. I didn’t think so (though now I do think I did as this disjointed recollection clearly — ha ha — shows). Then we were sitting in the waiting area for what seemed like forever while some dude kept telling me that I had blood running down my arm. No kidding, Sherlock, really?

What happened to blood being the ER’s equivalent to a fast pass at Disney? Cue really bad elevator music.

Fast forward a few minutes. Now I’m sitting on a table in a freezing exam room with a wad of gauze stuck to my head with some sort of numbing gunk on it, blood drying on my pants and arms. Meanwhile, the doctors and nurses are running around freaking out because the handout on the tetanus shot says that people who’ve had Guillain-Barre syndrome, might be contraindicated. Whatever.

Lucky me. While they were trying to locate an immunologist, I needed to go…. badly. So I found a restroom. But on the way out my gloppy gauze fell off my head and landed — yep, you guessed it — gooey side down on the nasty hospital bathroom floor. Joy.

Twenty minutes later the doctor comes back in and tells me he thinks that I could have the tetanus shot because my reaction was to a flu shot and the tetanus shot doesn’t have the same ingredients that caused my reaction. Eh? I didn’t care anymore, I was going to get the shot anyway. I’m pretty sure my neurologist would have told me to get it.

Now the doctor wants to go ahead and do the staples in my head — because staples are better and don’t require shaving hair — but the nurse has brought the wrong staple gun in. That thing was huge. I swear it was big enough to staple an elephant who just had a c-section together. After the doctor finds the smaller stapler, I finally get to point out that the numbing gunk has been off my head for a while, and that maybe we should put more on there. The doctor declines and says it will be ok, it hasn’t been long enough to wear off. Um, ok.

Five staples and much pain later (yeah the numbing effect didn’t wear off at all), we finally got out of there. Chris took pictures, but I’ll spare you the gore. They forgot to mention that I might have a concussion. Which I didn’t really figure out on my own until a couple of days later when I ran a red light in my foggy stupor and realized that maybe I shouldn’t be driving… especially with the kids in the car. The fourth day, I woke up and everything was clear again, and that’s when I realized I must have been concussed. I’m telling you, top rate speedy care at that ER, baby. All for the bargain price of $1500 bucks or something.

So that’s how my awesome weekend ended. I suppose it could have been worse.

 

Comments

2 Responses to “Crash, bang, birthday!”

  1. Katie on July 28th, 2011 9:18 am

    OMG. I’m glad you were able to make that phone call…

    And I’m tired of the ER. Only 2 trips so far this year, but really, isn’t that 2 trips too many?

  2. Melizza on July 29th, 2011 5:36 am

    Holy crapola! Hope you’re feeling much better.

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