i don't like doors anymore.

Feb 19, 2009 11:44

So I know I just updated yesterday, but MAN OH MAN do I have a story for you guys.



As you probably can't even tell from that crappy camera phone picture, that is my feet in the back of an ambulance going to hospital.

K so basically last night, I was sitting here in the study, not being studious, when I felt like getting some Doritos or something. So I got up and went to the door. Usually I would have opened said door as one does and walked to the kitchen to procure said Doritos, and my biggest problem would be cheese or nacho cheese. Unfortunately, as I reached for the door, my mum happened to open it at the same time. The corner of the door hit the end of my toenail and ripped it up off the nail bed.

Yes, that was as painful as it sounds.

Well, actually, it wasn't. I didn't even realize what had happened until I sat down and looked at my toe and saw BLOOD COMING THROUGH MY SOCK. The entire section of the sock covering my toe was bloody and the blood was coming through it onto the floor. So I took off my sock and realized that my nail was still attached but had mostly ripped off, and sat there for a while mopping up said blood with tissues until Mum decided it was time to call the ambulance. I really didn't think it was necessary until the feeling came back and it started to hurt. It absolutely KILLLLED. It was really painful. So long section of the story short, we didn't have any way to get to hospital on our own (Mum can't drive and neither can I, for that matter) so Mum dialed 000 emergency who put us onto a nurse who told us to elevate my foot, put some ice on it and that they would send a non-emergency ambulance in the next few hours. This was at about 7pm.

So I sat on the couch for a while and ate Pringles (we were out of Doritos!), watched Australia's Got Talent, which did nothing to ease my pain, and House, which featured a patient with uncontrollable pain so that also didn't help. At this point I had the ice and the elevation, but I couldn't take any painkillers because I'd already had like two Panadol earlier that day for a headache. At around 9.30 the ambulance turned up and two lovely nurses took one look at my toe and said I was going to hospital to be seen by a doctor. So I hobbled outside to the road where I hopped on the stretcher and into the ambulance. (My mum road up front). It was really strange. My neighbor turned up in a frenzy to see why the hell there was an ambulance outside and I was so flustered I wound up accidentally taking the TV remote with me LOL. Other than that, all I had was my mobile and my other shoe.



My reflection in the back window on the ambulance as it drove. We actually sat in the ambulance for about five minutes while the nurse called the hospital to see if it was open for patients (it was).The other nurse came back and put a BP thing on my arm and a heart rate monitor on my finger. I was so weirded out my heart rate was so high she couldn't put it on the chart because on paper it would look like heart problems lol. She also quizzed me on whether my toenail exorcism was caused by dizziness, loss of consciousness, falling over etc; all of that lovely stuff that would have got me admitted.


Bandages and gauze and stuff. Right next to me head were the vomit bags! During this point my toe was slightly less painful but it definitely still hurt, and I could still walk if I shuffled around on my heel.

Anyhoo, the ambulance pulled up to the hospital ambulance bay about fifteen minutes later and they moved the stretcher inside. For a while I sat in triage next to some guy wearing a neck brace who'd obviously been assaulted by someone, and then they moved me a little forward into a hallway so they could deal with him.



The hallway lol.

About ten minutes later the nurse came back and got me off the stretcher and into a wheelchair, because she was worried about me putting any weight on the toe. (If I had at that point blood probably would have started dripping again, so that was a good thing). She also got me a nice warm blanket for my legs because it was cold outside and I was only wearing my track pants. Then I was wheeled out to the waiting room where she warned us that it would probably be "quite a while" before we were seen, this being an emergency room and all. That was at around 9.45pm. Mum said she would be surprised if I was treated before midnight. People looked at me strangely because I was the only one in a wheelchair lol.



Here is my mum in the waiting room.

Waiting wasn't actually too bad. The TV was on so we got to see Cold Case, and then Ellen, and then Music Jungle which is basically a really long ad for Bigpond Music. Mum was right in her estimate. We had to wait for a total of THREE AND A HALF HOURS. During this point the blood underneath my nail started to congeal and ooze, and dripped several times onto the waiting room floor. (...TMI?) So I just sat in my wheelchair and dabbed at it with a tissue and watched the TV. We didn't get called through until about 1.30am lol. The actual consultation was pretty routine - she took a look at it and said immediately that removing the toenail would do more harm then good, that I possibly have a slight fracture in my toe, then bandaged it up to keep it clean and said to stay off it for the next few days and that the toenail would probably fall off on its own eventually. She also gave me painkillers in the form of two Panadols and like three Nurofen, which were awesome. (Just to state the obvious, kids, painkillers are not awesome by themselves, but they are awesome when you've been in a hospital waiting room for three hours with your damn toe throbbing). Her recipe for future pain relief is two Panadol every four hours with Nurofen on top to stop inflammation. And then we bummed in a taxi and came home.

Here is my toe today, in front of the very door that caused my injury:


The pain right now is like twenty gazillion times better than yesterday, though if I sit for a bit I can still feel it throbbing slightly. However I just had the two Panadol I'm meant to have so get back to me before I have to take another two. As for how the injury looks, the last time I saw it before it was bandaged it looked pretty disgusting but that was mainly due to the dried blood and the congealed blood/pus oozing. I can bend it but it hurts, which is what leads me to believe it's a little fractured, but the doctor said that would heal too and it didn't seem bad enough to be anything more than bandaged. The bruising and swelling is probably starting under that bandage. The only real issue is that walking is a trial LOL. I still have to hobble around on the heel/half sole of that foot, and I'm not meant to wear close-toe shoes for a while because anything that presses down on the top of the nail even slightly is obviously going to add to the issue of oozing. But basically I'm okay.

THAT IS ALL. I WILL ACCEPT ALL FLOWERS AND DONATIONS OF GOODWILL!

emergency, personal, random

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