Monday, August 21, 2006
Techical difficulties and what health insurance is good for
OK, my blog is way behind but I blame the good folks at blogger, whose brilliant software has spanned two browsers to keep me from posting photos. In the meantime, for the second time in a couple months I spent the bulk of my off-day in the emergency room, although this time it was way cooler than heat exhaustion.
I was mountain biking and, while dropping down a dip in the trail, my foot slipped off my metal pedal and the pedal hit my calf hard.
"Gee," I thought. "That probably left a mark." Not thinking much of it I glanced at my leg to see buckets of blood pouring from a gaping wound in my calf and pooling in my shoe. The loosely hanging flesh and quickly draining blood told me that maybe it was time to head to the emergency room.
After thinking better of driving myself (passing out at the wheel is frowned upon), I called Bones, who was only a few blocks away and pedaled over to her house to catch a ride to the ER. After bleeding on her car for a few minutes and woozily giving her the wrong directions to the hospital, I made it to the ER where a bored-looking receptionist, without looking at my cut, told me to sit down and wait.
So I sat and bled for a while longer, before a nurse finally checked out my injury and took me to a room. There a parade of nurses looked at my cut, recoiled, and left without doing much (though they were very prompt about getting my insurance information).
Finally a doctor came in and examined my cut. She was suitably impressed.
"What's that blue stuff?" Anna asked.
"That's the fascia. It covers the muscle."
I had managed to cut my leg down to the muscle in a jagged 10 cm smiley face (photos to come) but just avoided damaging the muscle, which may have been one surgery and several thousand dollard worse.
Ironically, the most painful part of the whole ordeal was getting the medicine to dull the pain. The doctor gave me a local anesthetic by way of eight shots directly into the cut. Eight swift kicks to the junk would have felt much better.
Then she shot a cleaning solution through the wound and eventually sewed me up with 16 stitches, gave me a tetanus shot (It included a whooping cough vaccine. Twofer!) and sent me hobbling on my way.
Now I can show off my awesome scar and tell everybody who doesn't read my blog about the time I fought off an attacking cougar.
I was mountain biking and, while dropping down a dip in the trail, my foot slipped off my metal pedal and the pedal hit my calf hard.
"Gee," I thought. "That probably left a mark." Not thinking much of it I glanced at my leg to see buckets of blood pouring from a gaping wound in my calf and pooling in my shoe. The loosely hanging flesh and quickly draining blood told me that maybe it was time to head to the emergency room.
After thinking better of driving myself (passing out at the wheel is frowned upon), I called Bones, who was only a few blocks away and pedaled over to her house to catch a ride to the ER. After bleeding on her car for a few minutes and woozily giving her the wrong directions to the hospital, I made it to the ER where a bored-looking receptionist, without looking at my cut, told me to sit down and wait.
So I sat and bled for a while longer, before a nurse finally checked out my injury and took me to a room. There a parade of nurses looked at my cut, recoiled, and left without doing much (though they were very prompt about getting my insurance information).
Finally a doctor came in and examined my cut. She was suitably impressed.
"What's that blue stuff?" Anna asked.
"That's the fascia. It covers the muscle."
I had managed to cut my leg down to the muscle in a jagged 10 cm smiley face (photos to come) but just avoided damaging the muscle, which may have been one surgery and several thousand dollard worse.
Ironically, the most painful part of the whole ordeal was getting the medicine to dull the pain. The doctor gave me a local anesthetic by way of eight shots directly into the cut. Eight swift kicks to the junk would have felt much better.
Then she shot a cleaning solution through the wound and eventually sewed me up with 16 stitches, gave me a tetanus shot (It included a whooping cough vaccine. Twofer!) and sent me hobbling on my way.
Now I can show off my awesome scar and tell everybody who doesn't read my blog about the time I fought off an attacking cougar.
Friday, August 04, 2006
I've got gas...
In my lungs that is.
Boise isn't the seediest town in the world but we do occasionally get high profile crimes (such as our recent beheading/vehicular homicide).
Last night, police shut down a neighborhood where a guy had barricaded himself in his house and said he had a bomb. We later found out he had likely killed his wife and himself.
While we were on the scene, there were about a dozen gunshots, which turned out to a cop firing tear gas into the house to flush the guy out (they didn't yet know he was dead). Soon after, a line of cops walked quickly away from the scene. I figured they were wrapping up but, in fact, a breeze had picked up the tear gas and they were getting the hell out of there.
We were warned the cloud of gas was heading towards us and, being the intrepid (stupid) reporter that I am, I stayed so I could see what it's like to be tear gassed.
It sucks.
Sure enough, tear gas works. It sears your eyeballs (it's especially fun when it gets inside your contacts) and burns the ever living fuck out of your throat and lungs. I nearly yacked while stumbling blindly into a nearby store to escape.
When that cloud hit everyone scattered, cop, TV news vermin and gawker alike. I took the greatest pleasure in the fact that the tear gas hit right when several stations were doing live shots.
So next time you're throwing folding chairs into a McDonald's window outside the G-8 or burning cars after the Raiders win the big one (right about never), you can rest assured when that little metal canister tinks off the pavement that yes, indeed, tear gas truly blows.
Boise isn't the seediest town in the world but we do occasionally get high profile crimes (such as our recent beheading/vehicular homicide).
Last night, police shut down a neighborhood where a guy had barricaded himself in his house and said he had a bomb. We later found out he had likely killed his wife and himself.
While we were on the scene, there were about a dozen gunshots, which turned out to a cop firing tear gas into the house to flush the guy out (they didn't yet know he was dead). Soon after, a line of cops walked quickly away from the scene. I figured they were wrapping up but, in fact, a breeze had picked up the tear gas and they were getting the hell out of there.
We were warned the cloud of gas was heading towards us and, being the intrepid (stupid) reporter that I am, I stayed so I could see what it's like to be tear gassed.
It sucks.
Sure enough, tear gas works. It sears your eyeballs (it's especially fun when it gets inside your contacts) and burns the ever living fuck out of your throat and lungs. I nearly yacked while stumbling blindly into a nearby store to escape.
When that cloud hit everyone scattered, cop, TV news vermin and gawker alike. I took the greatest pleasure in the fact that the tear gas hit right when several stations were doing live shots.
So next time you're throwing folding chairs into a McDonald's window outside the G-8 or burning cars after the Raiders win the big one (right about never), you can rest assured when that little metal canister tinks off the pavement that yes, indeed, tear gas truly blows.
