Thursday, October 30, 2008

The Incredible Hulk

Hi. This has been a week of all weeks, let me tell you!

First, Monday morning, I was in the teacher's meeting and started coughing. I left to get cooled down and get a drink. I went into my classroom to open the window for a breeze. The window has no crank on it, and previously I've been able to pound on it gently, and it pops open. Pound, pound, SMASH! My fist went through the window. I broke the window with my fist. Apparently I'm the Hulk.

After the initial shock wore off, I said, oh no, oh no, oh my goodness, Oh my GOODNESS, and hurried to the office. I brought everyone out of their offices to my side, looking for glass, applying pressure, and trying to problem solve for me. The cut was about 1/4 of an inch from tendons, 1/2 inch from veins. The cut was more of a slice sideways, like peeling an apple. Not straight down in, but not a scrape either. After gauze and tape, I called Kaiser, (my dr's office), and told them the problem. They had me on the phone for about 10 minutes, trying to set an appointment up for me! I was pushed out the door by the secretary who took care of the rest of the phone call, and out I went, driving myself to the hospital, 10 mins away. Yep. I drove myself with my hand on my head. Good idea, I thought, until blood came through the gauze I had on. Then I thought it was probably a stupid thing to do. Dad concurred.

I get to Kaiser, and it feels like I'm in an E.R. episode, staggering in, asking for a doctor, showing my wound. I ask the pharmacy where I could go to find a doctor. He told me I needed to drive to the emergency room because they don't do that here. What??? I said, well, I know there are doctors here, and i need one, so I'm going to find a doctor.

2 hours, 2 antibiotics, 4 shots of anesthesia (I can't think of the medical term right now, but I know I've heard it on TV) , 5 stitches and an arm splint later, I head back to school to teach for the rest of the day. Nope. I didn't go home. I wasn't even asked if I wanted to go home.

But, I did stay home from school on Wed. I needed a break to get over this cold and to heal my arm. It was a great day.

So now I'm babying it as much as I can, always wearing the wrist brace to prevent too much movement at that skin.

Now, pictures for your viewing pleasure. (I didn't include the grossest ones.)





I took my camera into school to show the kids. They LOVED it! My friend, Eric said that it looks like a shark bit me.

Who does this? How many people put their hand through a window? Dad says a lot of people. I think of how dumb I was and laugh at the fact that I broke a window with my fist! This will go in the books as one of the stupid things I did while teaching. What memories AND great scar story!

And you know what? My repaired window now has a handle on it. Hmmmm.... :-)

1 comment:

Tiana Elise said...

When I was a kid, I saw a spider on the outside of my bedroom window. Clever me decided to kick the window 'gently' to knock the spider off of it. (I was sitting on my bed, if you're wondering how I could kick it.) One kick and a few seconds later glass was shattering around my foot. Yeah, I knocked the spider off and the window out too! Thankfully no glass cut me so no emergency hospital visit. I guess you're dad is right. It's more common than you think.