What began as a wonderful day turned into a major disaster. On Saturday, I made plans with Emily to go to the BEACH! We haven’t had a day of sun in weeks and the weather was looking GREAT! She had slept at her cousin’s house the night before so I told her to be ready and I would be over to get her. I got all the beach essentials together for our trip and packed the car with sunscreen, magazines, bottled water, soda, snacks and chairs. I picked out my best beach outfit and called Emily to tell her I’d be there in a few minutes. I pulled into the driveway and heard the kids in the backyard.
Obviously I wasn’t paying attention to where I was walking and paying attention to what they were doing, and BAM! Next thing I knew, I was on my knees in the gravel which was their driveway. Apparently, there is a part of the driveway that was never paved, which is now a big ditch next to the fence. I was wearing capris and flip flops and the result wasn’t pretty. From what I could see, I scraped up my palms and my ankle and calf. I brushed myself off and started to hobble into the backyard. Her cousin yelled, “Watch your step!” warning me a little too late. I told her I had already fallen and she ran inside to get a first aid kit. Emily felt horrible. She helped me to wash my legs off and apply bandages. Then, I rolled up my pants and there it was, a scrape FAR WORSE then the others. I hadn’t even felt it at first. I looked closer and there was a piece of gravel lodged under the skin of my knee. We bandaged the rest of my leg up and I thought of what I should do next.
My first thought was, go home and show Jenn, my landlord, who is a nurse. She would know what to do. That was the plan! Emily said she would stay at her cousin’s house while I went to get it looked at. Well, it turns out that Jenn was an hour away and not returning home until that night. When I called her, she told me to go to a walk-in medical facility that was close to the house. I laid down on the couch and took a picture of my bandaged leg:
Then, after a few minutes of rest, I hobbled back to the car and drove to the walk-in. CLOSED. At this point, the pain in my knee was becoming unbearable and I decided that as much as I HATE hospitals, I needed to get to one ASAP.
I got to St. Catherine’s Hospital in Smithtown and the ER parking lot was full. That is never a good sign. I parked 2 lots away and made my way, slowly, to the entrance. I saw the triage nurse and told her I fell. They brought me right back and registered me. I informed them I was taking Coumadin and I think it was for this reason that I was treated fairly quickly. Within 15 minutes I was brought in and met with a physician’s assistant. I told her what happened and she sent me for X-Rays. She didn’t want to dig around for a rock if there wasn’t one there. While I was waiting to be brought for the X-Rays, I took another pic of my leg, this time without the bandages:
That hole in my knee, that’s where I thought the rock was. Twenty minutes later, she came back and said “Yup, there’s a rock.” I heard her say something to the nurse about a “knife” and I nearly passed out. She said the part that would hurt the most was the shot of numbing agent they needed to inject my knee with. She wasn’t kidding. After the initial pinch and burn of the shot, all I felt was pressure. I tried not to look, but I did. She was cutting the hole open bigger to get the rock out. I’m glad I was on a stretcher, because I nearly passed out again. After about 5 minutes, the rock was found. She told me she needed to stitch it up, but she didn’t want it to get infected, so she was just going to put one stitch in. This was my first “stitch” ever and I was so proud of myself that I handled it so well. They even gave me the rock to keep in a little urine cup (LOL) and told me to stay off my feet for a few days:
By the time I was released and went to fill my antibiotic prescription, it was past 6pm and our perfect beach day was officially ruined. Even though my trip to the emergency room made for a good story (complete with rock souvenir), I would have much rather been laying on the beach with Emily. There’s always next weekend…
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