Emergency Room Memories

My recent visit to the emergency room  along with a current bout of some strange stomach ailment reminded me of my first voluntary visit to an emergency room. I had been to the emergency room once before, that I know of, and that was when my mother and I discovered I was allergic to cats the hard way. I was about 4 or 5, and was playing with some wild kittens. Apparently, my allergy is mostly contact based, where if I touch a cat, and then my eyes, my eyes will itch and swell up. My mother was afraid that my eyes were going to pop out of my head, and thought it was due to me playing with the fireworks earlier in the day. Needless to say, my eyes are still firmly socketed in my skull and I am more cautious around cats. (insert obligatory crude humor regarding pussy allergies here)

I had led a fairly medically charmed life. Routine doctor visits, a bout with bronchitis in high school, but nothing ever requiring a visit to the old ER. No broken bones, no major cuts, no internal issues. In my mind, the ER was limited to what I saw on TV. Doctors running around frantically yelling things like “cc’s of unpronounceable medicine” and “stat” while patients walked in carrying a major limb in their teeth or something. To me, emergency meant “EMERGENCY!!!” So, all of my visits to the doctor were of the tough it out until the next day and see the regular doctor type.

I was about 21 or 22, and my first wife and I were living away from home for the first time. By away from home, I mean farther than a five minute drive away from mom and dad. I woke up in the middle of the night with horrible pains in my gut. It was really bad, the groaning kind of pain, arms crossed over your middle hunched over can’t walk pain. My first thought was to go to the bathroom, so I did. At least I tried. I will attempt to not be crude when I say that though the effort was valiant, nothing was forthcoming, so to speak. This went on for about an hour, while my wife asked repeatedly if I wanted to go the the hospital. Maybe she knew more about her cooking than I was led to believe pre-wedding, but she seemed to go on and on about it. She had come from the school of thought that the ER was a 24-hour medical drive through, and why not visit? Finally, after further failed attempts in the bathroom, I agreed to let her take me to the hospital. It was a long drive, as neither of us had ever been to the hospital and only had a vague knowledge of its location from seeing the wind sock for the helicopter from the freeway. We managed to get there and get checked in and they took me to a room and I lay on a gurney. Then, a nurse came in to do triage.

Oh, the nurse. She is probably the reason why I even remember this incident so vividly. She was stunning. She came into the room and stood over me bathed in a radiance I had only seen in Sunday school pictures. She explained who she was, and that she was the nurse for the helicopter, but worked in the ER when not plucking people to safety. She had soft, wavy brown hair, deep brown eyes that anime tries and fails to emulate, and was wearing a jumpsuit as part of her Helicopter EMT uniform. It was deep blue, had an embroidered patch over her perfect left breast. The zipper was undone farther than I think she was aware, and her cleavage showed a generous expanse of tan, freckled real estate. Those of you who are old enough, think Cannonball Run. If you have seen it, and are male, you know exactly what I am talking about here. I was instantly smitten. She called me sweetie, and I hated for her to see me in the state I was in.  My wife had stayed out in the waiting room because we had to bring my oldest son, so it was just the two of us. And I was glad.

She poked and prodded on my abdomen, asking if it hurt at every location. She found a spot that hurt, and told me she would be right back. I desperately tried to remember if I had seen a lever or something on the gurney that would make it lower so she would have to bend over further. She returned with a small cup filled with a vile looking liquid and told me to drink it. She helped me sit up and took the empty cup when I was done, then assisted me in laying back down. I briefly considered asking her to join me, but the pain would have precluded the rigorous activity I had in mind. She told me to try to get some rest, and she would check on me in about a half an hour. She kissed my forehead and shot the hell out of the amorous mood. A kiss to the forehead is about the best birth control ever. I fell asleep about five minutes later.

An indeterminate amount of time passed, and I was gently awakened by my vision of a nurse. She asked me, “How ya doin, handsome?” Hope flared in my chest, I only needed to convince her to keep me overnight and send the wife home, and she would be mine! She rolled me onto my back and started her prodding, asking the same questions. “Does it still hurt? How about here? Here?” It still hurt like hell, but I wasn’t about to show pain in front of my fair lady. She got to the spot where the pain had been the last time she poked it. “Does this spot still hurt?” She asked, pressing firmly. I answered her with an explosion of gaseous emanations the likes of which have not been seen since the big bang. Civil War bugle players woke up entire regiments with shorter refrains. John Williams has conducted orchestras with smaller wind sections. In short, I farted. I also blushed, furiously. My eyes grew round as I stared at her face, horrified that my lady love was witness to the scatological spectacle. She smiled as she continued to apply pressure, and I swear to god, winked as she released, then repeated several times to get the thptb thptb thptp sound like a stalling motorboat.

“Feel better?” she asked with a smile.

“Physically, yes.” I answered. “I may be emotionally scarred for life, though.”

She gave me a bottle of the same medicine I had taken earlier and sent me home. I called in to work the next day and spent it in bed, pillow over my head, quietly weeping in shame and lost love.

The Saga of the Thumb, Part Deux

So after I get home from the ER and the always posh McDonalds drive thru, I ate and got back in bed. I succumbed (damn, that is a weird word to look at) to the “May cause drowsiness” and slept for a few more hours. After I woke up, I did my best to clean up a bit and went to get my prescriptions. The wife had a doctor’s appointment that she went to, and some scripts had been called in by her doctor, so I went to Wal-Mart to get hers and fill mine. I was told there was a four hour wait. I was not going to wait another four hours, since I was now seven hours into the “Take one to two tablets every 6 hours as needed for pain” time frame. I went to the Target pharmacy, which I whole heartedly recommend, and entered into the witty banter with the clerk.

“What did you do?”
(Insert brief synopsis of the last post here) I responded.
“What did you do that for?” (This has always struck me as the corniest of injury related joke/questions, so I decided to be a smart ass about it)
“It’s for safe cracking. It makes the fingertips more sensitive so you can feel the tumblers fall into place,” I told her. “Next week I do this finger.” I waggled my pointer at her so she would understand.

She thought I was hilarious, but she wasn’t the one actually filling the prescription, so I was not that concerned about her obvious lack of intelligence. I talked her into filling out my paper work for me, since it was my right thumb and I would be having difficulty writing. She asked what color cap ring I wanted, they color code them so you don’t mix them up, and told her green because “I like green”

I decided while I was waiting for my scripts to be filled that I had been a good boy at the doctor and didn’t cry when I got my shot, so I deserved a toy. I always got a toy when I was a kid, so I was going to get one for myself now. I started to wander to my favorite areas of Target, thinking of what would be a good toy. Oh, oh! I know! I will get a new video game to play on my unexpected day off. Noooo, can’t play a button mashing video game when you cant use your thumb to mash the buttons. Ooh! Lego’s! I love Lego’s! No… I would have to use my left hand, and would probably scatter them everywhere. I could get a movie, but I still had a few at the house that I hadn’t watched yet, and it seemed too silly to get another. Porn? No, same issues as Lego’s and video games. (think about it… yeah, wish you hadn’t now, dontcha?) World of Warcraft it was.

So, I went to work the next day, and dealt with the trials and tribulations of not being able to use my dominant thumb. My button fly was the first major obstacle, I could do the buttons on my shirt ok, but there was some difficulty with the, um, pressures involved with getting my pants done up. I am certainly happy that it is only one button, and not a pair of 501’s. I can manage the zipper, but actually going to the bathroom turned out to be some twisted three-fingered version of the claw game from the arcade. “Look Ma! I won a penis!”

Typing has proved to be a challenge as well. I have a fairly unique typing style where my right thumb is the only digit that hits the space bar when I type. I am now doing some strange combo where the left hand is a touch typist, but the right is the two fingered hunt and peck so the pointer can whack the spacebar. I have a tendency to double-space or put in an “n” or “m” instead of a space.

I keep it wrapped up to protect it, so everywhere I go I get the questions. Apparently, a wound is the perfect ice breaker, because people I have never seen before want to know what happened. I think I need to start coming up with more and more outrageous accidents to see how people react. Like, I don’t know, I work as a badger breeder and had a artificial insemination accident, and the badger is now filing charges or something.

Maybe later, I will talk about how my injury re-affirmed my recent life changing decisions.

The FBI Will Never Find Me Now

So I thought when I started this blog that I would be using it to talk about things that are happening in my life and what I thought or felt about them. I havent done that in a while, so here is an update.

Stupidity is painful. A buddy gave me an old-fashioned safely razor because he found one that he likes better. I have always had a fascination with old timey things, and I have my grandfathers old razor. I will probably clean it up and start using it some day. But I have been using this thing for quite a while and have found that for shaving my face, I dont have to change my shaving habits at all and still get the same quality shave. Provided I use the right blade. Even the best blade I have used so far only costs a fraction what the fancy cartridge blades I have been using cost. The wrong blade causes a lot of nicks and cuts, but the good ones do great. I still use the cartridge blades for shaving my head, but that is due to the flexibility of the blades on my skull. They are less likely to scalp me. I have not yet purchased on of the fancy stands to hold the blade on the bathroom counter, so I have been keeping it in a drawer. (dun dun duuunnnnnn)

My work schedule changes about once a month. I had just gone onto the early shift, which means that I have to get up at about 3:30 am to get ready and travel the hour I need to get to work. I have a punctuality fetish, and always leave early, just in case. This, combined with the razor in the drawer, proved to be a disasterous combination. I was very tired at 3:30 Wednesday morning when I went into the bathroom. I started to prepare my devices for the morning routine, and reached into the drawer for the razor. It was not facing in its usual direction, and I was not paying sufficient attention. I sliced off my right thumbprint. At this point, I became sufficiently awake to pay attention to my surroundings. I accurately noted that the flesh from my thumb was residing comfortably inside the razor head. I noted that there was a lot of blood coming from my thumb. I experimented, and concluded that water running over the wound was ineffective at stopping the bloodflow, and as a side effect, it caused a significant amount of pain. An in depth survey of my surroundings showed that there were no hand towels readily available. A search of the cabinet revealed a clean hand towel, and proved forensics scenes from NCIS to be accurate as to the shape of blood droplets on the floor. I was also able to conclude that the distance from the bathroom to the bedroom where the wife lie in bed doubles in the event of emergency.

The wife attempted to assist, and asked if I wanted to go to the CareNow facility. In violation of all rules of “walk it off” I had been taught, I agreed. Gauze and pressure were applied, as were a shirt and slippers. Since we live with the in-laws, transportation to the CareNow facility was readily available. I got into the conveyence and continued to apply pressure to the wound, as well as keeping it elevated. The drive was when I remembered the proper method of dealing with injuries, and I repeated the phrase “I’m fine” repeatedly whenever I was asked how I was doing. I was also able to learn that CareNow is not a 24 hour facility. Realizing that I would need to actually go to the emergency room, and knowing that it was back the way we had come and further almost caused me to lose focus on the “I’m fine” mantra and get upset. However, there was no real pain in my thumb. The only pain I was feeling was due to my stupidity. That angered me greatly. We got to the emergency room and was quickly checked in. I honestly believe this was the quickest I had actually seen a doctor in an emergency room for any reason. I have been to a few, always taking someone else, and have now concluded that if you have a need to go to an emergency room and you aren’t bleeding, cut yourself in the parking lot before you check in. Maybe the triage nurses have to mop the waiting room or something.

The triage nurse did the usual, blood pressure, temperature, ask the standard questions. Then she wanted to do something unusual. She wanted to see the wound. I tried to explain that if I took the gauze off, there would be mass quantities of blood. I was also aware that removing the gauze would hurt. The wife showed the triage nurse the piece of skin she had thoughtfully removed from the razor and brought along, and I offered an alternate diagnostic method. “That part’s gone,” I explained.

“I still need to see the wound,” she unreasonably asserted. So we peeled back the gauze, and I was proven correct in both of my predictions. There was significant blood flow, and it hurt. Neither of these facts appeared to impact the nurse. The gauze was placed back on the thumb and I was taken to a room. A doctor and nurse came in and asked more questions, then they wanted to see the wound. I felt they could have just asked the triage nurse, but that wasn’t a part of the program. I warned them that they should get one of the funny little pans to catch blood before they removed the gauze, but apparantly they also needed to prove the CSI writers accurate in regards to blood droplet shapes on linoleum flooring. They looked, and verified both mine and the doctors theory that stitches would be impossible, since the skin had been completely removed. Grafting it back on was not feasible, as it would probably just dry up and fall off anyway. The solution was to use a coagulant pad to stop the bleeding, then bandage it and send me on my way after a Tetanus shot.

 So, they leave for a minute and come back with a big silver pouch and opened it. They remove a light brown pad that looks like a piece of cardboard, and start tearing it into pieces. To me, it looked exactly like a piece of asbestos, and I said so. They told me the name of it, bromide or some damn thing, and that it was a coagulant and would stop the bleeding. They get some more gauze pads out and an ace wrap. They remove the old gauze, a process which I may have mentioned was quite painful, placed the coagulant directly on the wound. I dont think that I actually heard the sound, I am pretty sure that it was only in my head, but I swore that I heard the exact sound that bacon makes when you place it in a hot skillet. I was so shocked by the pain, that any thoughts of walking it off were immediately forgotten. I almost forgot the rule about not crying. I was able to keep my vacabulary in check, barely. I know that I was exclaiming, and it was apparantly loud enough for the father-in-law to return to the room to see what was happening. They held the first pad on my thumb for a few minutes, then replaced it with another, which hurt just as bad as the first one. Then they wrapped that one in gauze, then the ace wrap. I was told to keep it elevated and they gave me pills. Yea pills!

They left me alone for about 20 minutes, then came in and removed the wrap and threw it away and peeled the coagulant pad off. It was still bleeding, enough to run down my arm, but they didnt do the pad again. They put a regular old non stick gauze pad on it and wrapped it with tube gauze. They asked if I wanted pain pills and I reluctantly (read vehemently) agreed. They gave me script and sent me home. By now I was hungry, so we went through the drive thru at McDonalds and I got breakfast burritos so I could eat one handed. Went home, ate, and went back to bed for a few hours.

Maybe later I will talk about the fun I had changing the bandage for the first time, but I think this is enough for now.

Illegal Sex

That headline should bring in some traffic. But it really is the subject for today. I have been thinking about writing about this topic for quite some time now, but I have some time to write now.

What a difference a week makes. I understand the need for an arbitrary age for the law to consider people consenting adults, otherwise each case would have to be a judgement call as to the mental maturity of the parties involved. But the societal attitude that has been defined by that age is the part that confuses me. I have never been able to understand why the 18th birthday is such a magical number. In my mind, I see two guys sitting in a mall. The scene plays out like this:

“Man, look at that chick! She is so hot!”
“Dude, she’s like, 16 you perv.”
“Nah, man. She lives in my neighborhood. She just turned 18 last week.”
“Really? Damn! I would hit that like the fist of an angry god!”

Why the attitude change? I understand how the law would look at the situation differently, it is very well defined, but the change in a persons attitude confuses me. A week before, it would have been a horrible case of statutory rape, but a week later it’s ok because of a set number of days a person has lived.

Another thing that confuses me is why are there so many laws regarding the exchange of money for sex? George Carlin asked this question best when he said “Selling is legal, fucking is legal. Why is selling fucking illegal?” For the purposes of this post, I am going to focus on laws regarding strip clubs. Actual prostitution may be touched upon, (heh heh) but I am going for the lesser of the sex related laws.

For those who dont know, there are basically three kinds of clubs where women dance in various states of undress. First, there is the bikini club. There is no actual nudity in these clubs, just women in bikinis dancing for men either on stage or in a private lap dance. Bikini can be very loosely defined, but the basic rule is there are no nipples or a vagina showing. These places usually sell liquor, so you have to 21 to get in like any other bar. Most places have a state or community law regarding the distance the girl must remain from the customer, usually three feet. This is commonly referred to as the three foot rule.

Second is the most common of adult clubs, the topless club. The only difference between this and the bikini club is that nipples are shown. Alcohol is served, three foot rule in place.

Third, there is the fully nude club. If you cant figure out what the girls wear in that club I suggest you get a dictionary and turn to the n’s. Strangely, laws state that you cannot serve alcohol in an establishment where the dancers are nude. So they are BYOB and only serve soft drinks or fruit drinks for you to put your own liquor in. Now here is where it gets interesting. Based on the fact that these are not bars, due to the law that forbids them to serve acohol, another law has been put into place to protect innocent eyes from fully naked women. You have to be 18 to get in. (magic birthday again) So, as far as the law is concerned, you can see the most of a woman when you are youngest.

Now the three foot rule laws are the ones that confuse me. If I meet a girl at a regular bar, and we hit it off and go back to her place, she could theoretically perform a lap dance as part of foreplay, then we can have sex. This happens between what the law calls “consenting adults” and is perfectly legal. However, if I go into a bar and give a girl $20 to do the same lap dance and we are closer than three feet, it is a crime. Why? We are both still adults, and we are consenting to a business transaction, isnt that consenting adults? And to continue on, if we were to have sex, that is prostitution and we both get busted. The end result is the same, only I spent $200 on the legitimate date for dinner and dancing and drinks before trying to take her to bed, instead of just handing her $200 and definitely going to bed. The first option seems too much like gambling to me, another illegal in most states activity.

The bottom line is, either way, you are paying for sex, and the difference between whether or not it is legal is how you spend your money. And I dont understand why. So who exactly are we protecting with these laws? The girls? I have known many of them personally in the past and asked them about the industry. None of them said they felt exploited. In fact, they were proud of the fact that they were the ones exploiting the men. They all had the choice as to who they were going to dance for, and they made more money than I did. Are the laws protecting me? From what? If the law wanted to save me from spending a shitload of money for sexual acts that were ultimately ungratifying it should have denied me both of my marriage licenses.

I believe that we need laws to protect people from other people. I dont think that anyone is needing protecting in strip clubs. And if prostitution were legal, and practiced in established locations, it would be a lot safer for everyone, medically or otherwise. But hey, I dont get to make the rules.

Yet.