Schemes o' mice an' men

Well, you what they say about best laid schemes.  Mine were simple.  Eat cake, run or ride around in an assortment of misadventures. Eat more cake.

Laying on my back with my leg (note, that is, ahem, ONE leg, one, singular) up in the air was not in the plan.

I got a little puncture injury to a lower extremity while squirreling about last week.  Cleaned it up, put a bandage on it, no muss, no fuss, no blog post. Went back to squirreling. It hurt but it was hardly more than a sharp poke, though it was pretty tender and sore over the weekend. Monday it was really sore. Yesterday, my left foot looked less like a foot than an inflatable sheep..

What's an inflatable sheep?

 

Sometimes I wish I'd majored in liberal arts, I'd know less. But I didn't, so I went to the ER, explaining I believed I had complications from an injury.

It wasn't long before I was in an exam room.

How did the injury occur? - I tell her, one eyebrow goes up, she doesn't call people into the room to point or laugh, that's always good.

Are you diabetic?  No.

Have you used birth control pills long term?  No, bad Netflix choices and a limited bar at home always seemed to do the trick.

Are you on any medications? - Gummy vitamins in my desk on days I don't get to eat right.  I had a Fred and a Wilma yesterday.  Daily glucosamine and fish oil.

What is the pain scale on 1 - 10.?  Look, I gave birth to a ten pound six ounce baby the old fashioned way and set my own broken arm once.  My pain scale is not YOUR pain scale.  Call it a six.

I was told "we'll have a nurse practitioner in here in a minute" as I took my slipper off for her (there was no getting a shoe on it, even one of my post torn miniscus ones that look like something Mickey Mouse would wear.)  She didn't say anything but an MD quickly showed up.

The pathophysiology was not a surprise.  There was an intimal injury to a vein from trauma and a bacterial infection, which caused swelling, with the end result being a blood clot (thrombosis) inside the vein. So - I get to spend a few days doing something I do NOT do very well. Take it easy. With my foot elevated so that the clot doesn't try and head north and throw a party in my lungs.

There is no fever.  The wound is healing with primary closure and I have an assortment of antibiotics, anti inflammatory and anti telemarketers to take. I know the signs of pulmonary embolism, acute myocardial infarction and and cardiovascular accident, though, with the location away from the main sephenous vein, that helps. (Though when I keep telling myself "it's not close to the saphenofemoral junction", I can't get the Heywood Banks"Trauma to the Groin" song out of my head.)

I will take my medications. I will not play contact football or juggle knives. I will not dangle my legs off a tall chair all afternoon playing Angry Birds.

On the plus side, from the knee up I feel good and the thrombosis is unlikely to add insult to injury with peptostreptococcus or fusarium proliferatum (which would be as much fun as Spa Day with Nancy Pelosi) though septicemia is always a risk. I've got the draft of Peter's new book in the Steve Maxwell sci fi series and a bunch of Bon Appetite and Model Railroader magazines purchased for fifty cents each from Half Priced Books.  I have a bunch of episodes of Pinky and the Brain, Dr. Who and Archer.

Even better, I was treated promptly and efficiently through a health care system that hasn't yet been totally bollocked up by some new age version of socialized medicine. If so, I'd be pasting my happy unicorn sticker to the back of my ice flow, setting a seat up on the four cases of Yuengling and asking Partner to give it a good shove out to sea.

So not to worry, I'm not going to.  There are people out there with a whole lot worse things to worry about.  If you say a prayer, say one for my Big Bro, say one for Roberta X's Mom, for Squeaky, for the folks in Colorado that lost everything in the fires and the families of Oklahoma, still reeling from the tornadoes, say one for folks you know that are dealing with serious, long term illnesses not just a minor hiccup in their week.

And have a piece of cake, you never know how long it's going to last.