Blood and Gore and Baby Wipes
1:33 a.m. Friday morning. I woke up with a start. Some sort of reflux, I bolted out of the bed looking at the clock.
A bit of a stumble coming out of bed and the left side of my forehead hit the edge of the bedroom door. On the plus side, I forgot about the reflux as I collapsed on the floor.
I put my hand to my head and it came back wet, very wet. I staggered into the bathroom and turned on the light.
The blood part of the title was evident. I grabbed a towel and wiped, spreading the blood, which kept flowing from my skin.
I soaked the towel and pressed it to the wound (which given the blood, I couldn’t see) and sat on the floor. I turned on the radio and listened to something for ten minutes or so.
Pulling the towel away, the blood started flowing again. Session two of compression, which worked.
I’m not big on first aid supplies. I rolled up a couple of paper towels, cut some strips of electrical tape and bound my wound.
It started seeping. Take two on the first aid. This time it worked.
At this point, fully awake, I looked around. Slasher movie in the bathroom and a trail of blood on the carpet through the bedroom. That would wait till the morning.
I gingerly got onto the bed, my head started pounding (it may have been doing so, but I hadn’t noticed). I thought through my options. I sleep on my side, usually my left. That wasn’t going to happen as the cut was on my left forehead. I tried my right side and listened to my head pounding and my right shoulder and neck aiking.
I tried flat on my back, which made the neck and shoulder worse. I built a ski slope with pillows trying to get rid of the angle between my torso and my neck and head.
I got up and sat on the couch for a while listening to and feeling my upper body pound.
Next try at the bed, I could alternate between flat on my back and on my right side, doze off, and repeat – 20 or 30 times over the rest of the night.
When the light started coming through the window I assessed matters. Interestingly, while my head was still pounding, I started figuring out how I was going to clean up the blood that I remembered depositing on the carpet and most surfaces in the bathroom.
Putting that off, I drank some orange juice and walked into the bathroom. I should have taken a picture. A roll of paper towels was strapped to my head with 4 strips of electrical tape.
I soaked the paper toweling with water and slowly pulled it away. Just a bit of oozing blood from my maybe inch and a half kind of reverse “s” wound.
Three aspirin and a fresh round of toweling and tape and back to bed.
A couple of hours later, during which I actually slept, I got up and pulled the “dressing” off. A bit of gore so I swabbed it again and then tried to figure out if I should go to a doc in the box.
It was clear that there was going to be a scar. As I don’t get by on my looks, I decided that self-treatment was in order. After some Internet time I bought some ointment, butterfly strips and something to cover it that says it will allow the wound to breath while it heals.
More aspirin.
The current plus side: a baseball cap hides the scene of the crime unless you are shorter than I am.
My current medical treatment includes alcohol taken orally.
Oh, the blood on the carpet. The Internet says use baby wipes. The Internet is right, though it takes forever.
7 comments:
After a start like that, your day had to get better- there was no place else to go!
Wishing you the best while you're on the mend...
Wow Dave. Sounds like quite the ordeal. Many years ago, I used to play Racquetball. I was playing doubles, which means there were four of us inside that little room. I was hit with a racquet right above my right eyebrow. Right on the bone. You know what a wounded boxer looks like when he suffers a cut above the eye? It's a gaping kind of wound.
To make a long story short...it bled like a stuck pig. Profusely! I had a towel that I held to it on the way home. One of the guys I was playing with drove me home. My wife went and bought some of those butterfly strips. I cleaned the wound out real good and applied the strips. It healed quite nicely. There is a hint of a scar today, but nothing else.
Hope you heal up nicely.
Thanks guys. As of today, no infection. The new ill, I think I sprained my neck/right shoulder in the impact. Hurts like a %$%#&*#!
That's a helluva lot to go through for relief from reflux. Next time try an antacid.
Head wounds always bleed profusely and quite often look worse than they are. The is a little thing they sell in the drug store. It's called a First Aid Kit - perhaps you should invest in one.
Recovery update: There will be a scar; but, it doesn't look like it'll be too bad. Shoulder still hurts, but only when I sit in a chair, resting my elbows on a table. I haven't figured that out yet.
SM, if I had a first aid kit it would have ruined the post - much better with towels and electrical tape. Though, maybe I should get one.
With two small children in the house and one old adult who, at the least little bump to a hand or arm, bleeds almost like a stuck pig, we keep a large -very large -supply of bandaids on hand all the time. Yesterday, my left hand was sporting either a Bob the Builder scene or Spongebob bandaid after the exuberant dog realized he was about to be taken out for a walk and in his excitement, jumping on me, his razor sharp little claws came in contact -briefly -with the top of my left hand. All you can see today is a big purple streak and a tiny hole barely larger than a pinhead -but man did that baby ever bleed at the time!
Welcome to the world of the klutz, Dave! Peace.
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