Daveed Reviews

What can you do in 3 hours?

Feeling industrious, I decided to do a little work on the on going DIY saga that is the shower in our master bath (that’s a whole blog in and of itself). This work required using a utility knife to score the backer board that is exposed from the row of tile I have removed around the base of our shower wall. Once properly scored, I then set in with a pry bar to bend the backer board upwards, towards the score until the board snapped along the score line. I know: Verrry Bob Villa of me.

Because this work is basically at floor level, I am sitting on my haunches in what will, one day, be the floor of our shower. My knees are drawn up to my chest and my arms are reaching around the outsides of my to the wall in front of me to do the work. As I am pulling on the pry bar, it slips from under the board and flat end of the bar hits my right leg.

“Ouch!”

My first thought is that this is just a nick, probably some broken skin, maybe a little blood. Until, that is, I start to feel something running down my leg.

“Crap”. I say and look down to see more than a little blood. Rudy, who is in the bathroom at that moment, becomes aware that I’ve done something to myself.

“Daveed? What did you do?” as she walks up behind me. “Oh, Daveed…”

I look down again and this time I have a really good idea that this is not a minor DIY knick or scratch. I guess I figure that anytime you look at one of your limbs and see a 3-inch gash that is exposing the fatty layers beneath your skin, you’re DIY work for the day is over.

“We need to take you to the hospital” Rudy says. Because I’m not one of those macho freaks that refuse medical attention when their head has been severed, I agree and ask for a towel. She hands me the only white towel we have in our linen closet.

“Does it have to be the white one?”

“Sorry. I thought we were in a hurry” and then “You need to be putting some pressure on that” as she brings me a charcoal towel, which I wrap around my shin. “Do you want a belt?”

“What? I’m not putting a freaking tourniquet on my leg!” I say this because I sed to be a Boy Scout and remember reading that these are to be used only in extreme situations, like when your head has been severed.

“Not for a tourniquet, but to help keep the towel on.”

“No, I’m OK” I say, because while I do accept medical care when I need it, I do have a stubborn streak in me.

I stand up, ask Rudy to grab another towel (she just got a new car and it seems that blood all over the backseat might affect its resale value), and start to walk through the house bent over, clutching the towel to my shin. Walking like this ain’t easy, and certainly not manly.

After a moment of debate as to which side of the car I should get in (rear passenger side, butt first) we are off. And I do mean OFF, because Rudy’s hauling ass and I’m having a hard time keeping my balance because of the speed she’s taking the corners through our neighborhood. It’s 7:13 P.M.

At some point, I started to sweat profusely, which Rudy notices because she’s staring at me in the rear view mirror, just waiting for me to pass out. She cranks up the AC.

Here’s where I get a really good look at the damage. It’s nasty! I can see the bubbles of the fat cells about half an inch down. I send the message from my brain to my feet to make my toes wiggle my toes and move my foot up and down to be sure everything is still connected. All my little piggies wave back to me.

“Isn’t there a main artery or something that runs down your leg?” Rudy asks. I don’t say anything, mostly because I don’t appreciate the implication that I might be bleeding to death. I pull off the canvas belt and wrap it around my shin. Not as a tourniquet, silly, but because I’m tired of doing the hurdler’s stretch in the back of Rudy’s ride.

Rudy pilots the TL to the nearest Doc in a Box, which is closed. A couple of neck snapping turns later and we are off to the ER at the Looserville hostipal (shout out to Karson).

Once I am unfolded out of the car, I look hopefully around for something I can ride in on, as I’m not looking forward to the half man, half ape walk into the ER waiting room. No luck, so I start my shuffle.

Rudy signs me in and I stare down everyone in the room that is gawking at me. “You want some of these side burns?!?” my maniacal glare screams silently. I puff out my chest a little more and start to wait. To pass the time, I wonder what the weight limit is of the waiting room chairs as a man that has to be over 4 hundy bends over, then falls the last 6 inches into a chair because he can no longer fight the fight against gravity. Part of me hopes for a Shallow Hal type moment. Another part is getting hungry and thinks of asking him if I can search through the folds of his skin for a Cheeto or 2, hell maybe even part of a Big Mac. Hey, I’ve lost blood; I’m entitled!

Around 8:00 I’m called into the Triage room and questioned and evaluated and tagged. I’m told that I’m in the right place. I start to feel proud of my gash.

One of the questions they axe is about alcohol consumption. I think they axe if you never drink, drink socially, or daily. I always feel the urge to lie when I get asked this question. Truthfully, I drink just about everyday. That might be in the form of a couple bottle of Shiner or a couple bottles of vino. Yes, sometimes in entails 5 Mexican Mamas from Anamia’s, but on the average I drink what I drink because I like the taste. But, to admit to a healthcare practitioner that I drink daily makes me sound like a lush, so I always feel the need to qualify the answer by saying “I have a glass of wine or 2 every day…” I guess I need to work on making that sound more convincing, because the look I get from the question asker almost always says “yeah, right…”

A wheel chair is rolled in and I am taken about 15 feet to a gurney in the hall. Above me is a sign that says HALL 4 and across the ER I can see someone writing HASS, DAV on a dry erase board next to HALL 4. Rudy asks if I’m 4th in line for a room. “No, I’m the 4th person too many to be here tonight”.

A PA named Jurry introduces himself and says he’s going to get me back on my feet real quick. Then he’s gone and all I see of him for the next hour is his eye contact-averting glance at the floor as he walks in and out of the treatment rooms.

The ER is a grim place, as you would expect. I can’t imagine that anyone’s day that is going as planned has ever been to an ER, so that explains the dour look on everyone’s face. Down the hall is a small boy who has gut his leg on a piece of glass (I’m sure my gash is bigger than his). His shrieks and screams fill the ER as the doctor sets in on him. I remember screaming in a similar manner when I was about 5 and getting stitched up after allowing a neighborhood dog to make an afternoon snack of my left cheek. I lay on the examining table then, screaming bloody murder, while my mom attempted to soothe and calm me while Dr. Bario stitched up my face without using pain killer. I wondered if Dr. Bario was still alive and practicing in Looserville, Texas.

Jurry finally came back and got down to business. Firstly, he put what amounted to a giant tampex under my leg to catch and absorb any and all fluid that spilled out of and off of me. He opened a bottle of a reddish brown fluid and mixed it with a bottle of clear fluid. He then took a syringe with a needle that looked like it was a foot long and started to draw into the syringe lidocane. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the needle. Surely he wasn’t going to poke me with that, was he? I started sweating again. Rudy jokingly asked if I wanted to hold her hand. I jokingly said “yes’, then took her hand in mine.

Once the syringe was filled, he unscrewed the harpoon from, exposing a needle as fine as a hair. Phew! Jurry looked at me, warned me there would be a prick and a sting, then started going about the business of numbing me.

Next I was irrigated. Jurry used the syringe tube (with no needle) to suck the clear/reddish brown mixture, then a thimble-sized funnel to squirt out any debris that may have found its way into my gash. I couldn’t feel anything, except for the fluid running down the outside of my calf, so I bravely looked down.

For sure, it’s weird to see something happening to you that you can’t feel, but you still know it’s your body you are looking at, so when I saw Jurry swabbing out my gash, feeling or no, it was a little nauseating. Rudy must have agreed, because she suddenly squatted next to my gurney. Jurry chuckled and said that was wise, especially since he didn’t want to have to stitch up the both of us that night.

After the irrigation, Jurry stuffed my gash with some gauze while he created a sterile area around my leg using a pink drape. He donned a pair of surgical gloves and started knitting.

3 loops inside the cut with a dissolving suture, 15 outside. Nice. I ask Jurry if the fact that there are stitches inside makes the wound impressive. Jurry’s a dry guy, but I can hear admiration in his voice when we discuss the worthiness of my gash.

Once Jurry’s job is done, a doctor introduces himself and checks out Jurry’s crochet knots. After a squirt of Neosporine, some gauze and tape, I’m checking out and Rudy’s driving me home, this time with out the whip-lash inducing stops, starts and turns.

It’s 10:00 when we get home. 3 hours from door-to-door.
Back in the bathroom, I examine the pry bar. There’s some of me on it. Cautiously, I use it to grab a chuck of the wall that still needs to come off and remove it. There: Now I can go to bed.

posted by daveed @ 27.7.06