{"id":1244,"date":"2009-10-23T16:47:54","date_gmt":"2009-10-23T23:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/?p=1244"},"modified":"2009-10-23T16:50:45","modified_gmt":"2009-10-23T23:50:45","slug":"i-cant-think-of-a-title-for-this-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/23\/i-cant-think-of-a-title-for-this-post","title":{"rendered":"I Can’t Think of a Title for this Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

[WARNING<\/strong>: This blog entry contains graphic (but hopefully entertaining) descriptions and photos of injuries, blood, sutures, and carpet cleaner. Don’t read it if you’re feeling squeamish. It’s also lengthy and self-indulgent. Don’t read it if you’re feeling impatient. The bottom line is that I’m fine.]<\/p>\n

I got up early this morning because I was mad at the kittens. They’d woken me up and my lower back felt out of whack because Edwin had been pressing himself against my hip. This wasn’t the first such incident but for some reason it pushed me across some sort of internal threshold of patience or tolerance.<\/p>\n

After breakfast (over which we had a brief discussion about cats and beds and how one might get more sleep when the former were on the latter) we started our workout, as usual. Tracie and I have been doing the P90X fitness program for about seven weeks and today was Legs & Back day.<\/p>\n

Not long after we started I noticed an odd stain on the heated bed that Widget sleeps on. (It’s in a corner of the living room, the room in which we work out.) Upon closer examination I found that dear old Widge had had an “accident” on her bed. Given that she’s had impeccable litter-box habits for her entire 15 years, this was cause for alarm. Her weight has also been falling somewhat disconcertingly over the last several months. We decided it was time to take her to the vet to find out whether something was wrong or whether she’s just becoming an old cat.<\/p>\n

However, the vet’s office opens at 9:00 and it was still only 8:30 or so, so we continued with our exercises. Some of the exercises involve using a resistance band–basically a hunk of super-strength rubbery tubing with handles that you tug on in various ways to exercise various muscles. We have a thing made of nylon webbing that hooks between a door and its frame that you can loop the band through so that you can pull downwards to do chin-up-like exercises. I was using the heaviest bands we have, which supposedly provide resistance roughly equal to 40-pound weights. To complete the picture, I was on one knee, leaning forward, head downwards slightly, pulling with a wide grip. The description of this stance will become relevant later.<\/p>\n

I was several reps into my second set of these wide-grip pull-downs when the nylon-webbing thing pulled loose and, propelled by the tension of the bands, struck me in the top of the head.<\/p>\n

I fell over backwards. (Thankfully the floor is carpeted.) There was a ringing in my left ear and the top of my head hurt<\/em>. I said several things loudly and inarticulately, and then Tracie bent over me to try to ascertain the damage. At some point I removed my hand from my head and found it that it was covered with blood and a few strands of hair. Tracie first found a cut just below my hairline. At first she thought that was the extent of the damage, but a few minutes later I raised my head and she noticed that the small stream of blood from that cut wasn’t of sufficient volume to explain the fact that the carpet beneath my head was “squishy with blood” (as she later put it). I could tell that my head hurt in more places than just at the location of that cut, but because I have thick, dark hair and because there was lots of blood in it, Tracie couldn’t really tell the location and extent of other lacerations.<\/p>\n

It was then generally agreed that a visit to a medical facility was prudent, even though a hospital is about the last place we want to go during the flu season. We were still in sweaty workout clothes and it was only about 45F outside. Tracie changed while I managed to pull a fleece on with one hand while I continued to hold a dish towel and ice pack on my head with the other hand. <\/p>\n

Tracie trundled me down to the nearest emergency room<\/a> which, thankfully, was essentially devoid of patients. (Helpful hint: if you have a medical emergency, do it in the morning. ERs are less busy in mornings.) I’m always impressed by the personalities of ER nurses. They’re so completely calm and unflappable. I suppose it’s a job qualification.<\/p>\n

Once they admitted me and got me in a mostly horizontal position it was established that I did indeed have a second, more serious laceration on my scalp. Everyone was being very chipper and calm but I could tell that Tracie was now beyond any shadow of a doubt that bringing me to the ER was the right decision. A doctor came in and gave me a couple of injections of novocaine and epinephrine in various places to stop the bleeding and numb the various wounds in preparation for their forthcoming cleansing and closing. Getting injections in my scalp sounded rather dreadful but wasn’t particularly painful.<\/p>\n

The doctor turned me over to a technician who rinsed the blood out of the wounds and my hair. While poking around in the clots and clumps she discovered a third laceration which apparently had escaped prior observation because it had clotted shut and had hair matted over it. She fetched the doctor for another round of novocaine\/epinephrine injections for that wound.<\/p>\n

Once the technician had everything nicely rinsed out the doctor returned to stitch me up. Tracie expressed some surprise that he didn’t intend to shave my head a bit. He said that he didn’t think it was necessary but later allowed that it would have made things easier because my hair kept getting caught in the thread. I’d never had stitches before so there was some novelty to the procedure. Of course I couldn’t feel much of anything (thankfully) but there were occasional odd tugging sensations and faint pops which I took to be the needle going through my skin. I’m entirely glad that I wasn’t able to watch any of this, incidentally; I’m kind of a wimp about things like blood and needles and stuff. All in all it took nine stitches, three each on three cuts. The doctor knew his trade; Tracie later expressed some surprise that he was able to close the largest laceration with only three.<\/p>\n

Once the doctor was done with the sewing he gave me a once-over to verify that I didn’t have any hidden head or neck trauma. Somewhere in there the nurse returned to give me a tetanus shot since it had been about 12 years since I’d had one. After the doctor was done the tech returned to wash everything out again, the nurse put a couple of blobs of Bacitracin in strategic locations and we were on our way home not long after that. I have to go back on Friday to have the stitches removed. I’ve been advised to avoid washing my hair until then because the stitches can wick water into the wound and cause infection. Not washing my hair for a week is a slightly less unpleasant prospect than having an infection on the top of my head.<\/p>\n

Before we left the house, Tracie asked me what I needed her to gather up for me. I said “my wallet” because it has my insurance card, my driver’s license, and my Visa card in it. The next thought which passed through my head, which I did not voice, was “my camera–we need photos for my blog!” I wasn’t sure whether or not she’d find that as amusing as I did at the time so I didn’t say anything.<\/p>\n

Upon our return, however, we took some photos:<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

It really is alarming, isn’t it? I had no idea my hair was this grey on top until I saw these photos.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t until I was home and sitting on the floor with the cats that I realized that it could have been much, much worse. Had I not been careful about my posture while doing the exercise–that is, had I been looking up rather than down–the band probably would have hit me in the face rather than on the top of my head. Had that happened, I might not be using both eyes while writing this account. I might not be writing it at all. We’ve decided to remove the resistance bands from our workout regimen. <\/p>\n

While I sat and rallied my strength, Tracie (bless her heart) started cleaning the carpet. I never saw the actual extent of the stain; she wouldn’t let me look at it before we left and threw a towel over it upon our return. She got most of it out with cold water and towels and I tried to get more of it out with some enzymatic carpet cleaner. It still looks a bit as though someone carved a rare steak on the floor. [“You shoulda seen it,” Tracie says, reading over my shoulder.] You know how when you buy meat or chicken at the grocery store and there’s that little absorbent thing underneath it that gets kind of pinkish with the little bit of blood it soaks up? That’s what the paper towels I used to blot up the blood\/cleaner solution reminded me of.<\/p>\n

Now that we had my little medical mishap squared away, Tracie called the vet’s office and managed to get an appointment for Widge in the afternoon. I got online and explained to Chris that I wasn’t going to be particularly productive today, what with feeling a bit shaken and having a vet appointment to go to. He was entirely understanding, being familiar with the demands of both head wounds and ailing cats. (Okay, I’m kind of guessing about the head wounds part. I know that he, being a veteran rock star and so forth, has had more injuries than I have. His first question was, “are you gonna have interesting scars?”)<\/p>\n

Widget hates car rides and said as much the whole way to the vet’s office<\/a>. Fortunately it’s only about 10 minutes from the house. Dr. Baumann looked Widge over and expressed the opinion that while she’s probably suffering from the kidney problems common in old cats (as we suspected), it was worth getting a blood sample from her to establish whether there is anything else amiss. Widge then demonstrated that, despite her age and somewhat frail stature, she’s somewhat feisty and entirely capable of putting up a good struggle when confronted with hair clippers and big needles. The doctor and the tech prevailed in the end. We’ll have the lab results on Monday. Widget is fine now and seemingly quite unruffled. Here’s a shot of her that Tracie took while I was writing this:<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

Nicely enough, it doesn’t show the shaved spot on her neck from where they drew the blood samples. The vet, who’s really a sweetheart, fussed a bit over my condition. She pulled out a ruler and established that my forehead injury is only about three inches from my eye and we reflected a bit about how fortunate that was.<\/p>\n

So, count your blessings, as the saying goes. I got up this morning thinking that the biggest annoyance of the day was that I’d been woken up early by a couple of enthusiastic kittens. Now I have nine stitches in my head, a long and unusually involved blog entry, and an appreciation that things could be much worse, both for myself and for my cat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[WARNING: This blog entry contains graphic (but hopefully entertaining) descriptions and photos of injuries, blood, sutures, and carpet cleaner. Don’t read it if you’re feeling squeamish. It’s also lengthy and self-indulgent. Don’t read it if you’re feeling impatient. The bottom line is that I’m fine.] I got up early this morning because I was mad… Continue reading I Can’t Think of a Title for this Post<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1245,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244\/revisions\/1245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}