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Monday, May 31, 2010

Ouch! Accidents happen...

I still can't believe the stupid thing I did last week. Everybody knows about the dangers of needles and sharp objects in general. For years I have been teaching the kids to stay away from my work area and not touch my sewing needles, unless I am supervising. So what did I do? I dropped a needle, and not a small one at that, on the rug in our family room. This needle got stuck with the rear end up in the air. And guess what happened next? I stepped on it. Not lightly. Not halfheartedly. Nope. I stepped on it hard, so hard that the "darn" thing penetrated a toe on my left foot. Not halfway. Nope. All the way through! Ouch! It was the weirdest thing. You know the sort of thing that, when it happens to you, you look at yourself and think: Oh, no! That's not my foot. No, no. This just did not happen to me!" The kind of situation where you separate yourself from your own body, because otherwise you could not stand it. Maybe like in childbirth. This hurts!

Since the other people in the room, I won't name any names here, showed no reaction to my plight - well it had been a pretty good movie, until this point - I hobbled out of the room to inspect the damage. After all you don't want to curse or bleed in front of the kids...

Good thing I did that mind/body separation thingy. Otherwise I would have fainted at what I saw. The needle was stuck right in the middle of my toe with the back end pointing up. Yessiree! How in the world? Shouldn't there be a bone or something? Must have gone right past it.

Whatever! I pulled it out. Sharp end first. Just the way it had gone in...Strangely enough there was NO blood. NOT a single drop of it. Can you believe that?

So I hopped to the bathroom to wash my injured foot. How do you wash out a puncture wound? How do you wash a wound that is on the inside of your body? Here I was, at 8.30 pm in the evening, standing in the bathroom considering my options. Images of the endless stream of bills for the ER room arriving at our house didn't help with the pain. I would have to make it through the evening somehow. So I went back to watch the rest of the movie. Can't remember what it was. Don't know how I made it through the night either. The throbbing went on all night. No doubt the bacteria were having a fun fest in my toe.

The next morning the family did appear a wee bit more concerned about my red swollen angry looking toe. At 7 am I managed to get a ride to Urgent Care. I love those people! The doctors and nurses are fantastic there. I got my Tetanus shot, painmeds, and of course, the usual round of antibiotics. If only it wasn't for those bills....I suppose I could have tried to tough it out some more, but my husband had a horrible skin infection a few years back. Out of body experience or not - I did NOT want to see a repeat of that show...
My friends, I am on the mend! Hallelujah!

8 comments:

Martha said...

Awful, but you don't want to let these things go, sometimes waiting makes it worse! Hope you're feeling better:)

kat said...

i'm glad you went to the urgent care. did they prescribe ice cream?

germandolls said...

I have not found an GP in town I like. But the docs at the urgent care facility are so nice! One of them goes to church with us.
Too bad, icecream wasn't on the prescription list. =( why can't they put antibiotics in icecream? That would make them so much more appealing. LOL

Eve's Little Earthlings said...

Just think of how horrible you would have felt if one of your kids had done that...so..you are actually lucky it was your toe! I am always leaving pins in the arms of our sofa and chairs and thinking it is ok because the eye end is sticking out. I guess it is NOT ok.

mini said...

Das hoert sich ja furchtbar an. Mir wurde schon beim lesen ganz schlecht. Ich weiss nicht, ob ich das haette selbst wieder raus ziehen wollen und koennen. Autsch! Ein Glueck, dass Du es bis zum naechsten Morgen ausgehalten hast, und es Dir nun schon wieder besser geht. Meine Mama wuerde jetzt sagen, dass man deswegen nie ohne Schuhe - auch nicht im Haus - rum laeuft. (Ich habe zu Hause nie welche an.)

Weiterhin Gute Besserung!
Alles Liebe,
Ulrike

germandolls said...

Hi Eve, you are absolutely right! I was glad it was me and not one of my kids or my husband. I feel very lucky in that respect!
I do the same thing as you - sticking needles in the arms of chairs or sofas...I won't be doing that any more!
Ulrike, meine Mutter und Deine Mutter waren da derselben Meinung. Wir mussten immer Hausschuhe tragen, und ich versuche das den Kindern immer einzutrichtern. Hahaha. Aber was nuetzt das, wenn man selbst nicht mit gutem Beispiel vorangeht?

Britta said...

Ouch! When I was three, I sewed through my index finger with the sewing machine and my aunt's dachshound once stepped into a needle the same way you did. That stuff hurts! Hope you feel better soon!

Britta (had to laugh so hard at your choice of song: "Mensch, Uschi, mach kein Quatsch" - so seventies!!!

germandolls said...

Ich habe immer Angst, dass mir das mit der Naehmaschine passieren koennte. Aua!
Der arme Dackel! Hat der dann auch Antibiotika bekommen?