November 23, 2004
Is This What the Rest of My Married Life Is Going To Be Like?
Saturday, I was looking forward to many uninterrupted hours of getting all our Christmas decorations up. But did that happen? NoooOOOooo. Mr. Fix-It had to go to the emergency room. Again. We walk in, and everyone's like, "Norm!"
One more visit, and he gets a free appendectomy!
Okay, we want a skylight, so when we got a new roof, the roofers did the outside part of the skylight. Husband just had to install the reflective tubing and the cover on the stairwell ceiling. And since the man has vast home-repair and remodeling experience, neither of us thought anything of it.
So, he went into the attic and drilled a small hole where we want the skylight to go. Then he came back down. Without his cordless drill. For whatever reason.
Okay, some makeshift scaffolding in the stairwell, and Husband does his thing, using "the enclosed template to make the appropriately-sized circle", then cutting it out with his little, electric saw.
Yes, he was cutting a 12" diameter circle. In the ceiling. Above his head. You can see where this is going, can't you? Yes, along with the circle of drywall comes the cordless drill crashing down. Because it was lying right there. And he cut a perfect circle around it.
It was like a fucking cartoon, that drill falling from a circle in the ceiling. I swear, I've seen the same thing happen to Wile E. Coyote, but with an anvil instead of a drill.
Husband yelled, and I was like, "What. What? WHAT?! Will you answer me?!" Of course, I'm picturing a missing hand or a saw imbedded in his skull.
"The drill fell on my foot. This isn't gonna be good."
In the kitchen, he took off his perforated shoe and his perforated sock, and there was the hole. We both looked at it like, "Huh." Then he put his foot down and put some weight on it. And then the blood started gushing!
Now, granted, he didn't hit an artery. There wasn't an arc of blood spouting across the room. But when a loved one is, quite literally, standing there in a pool of his own blood, it's GUSHING. So I got a towel.
"Oh, don't use a clean towel!"
"So I should put a dirty towel on your gaping wound?"
"That's a nice, white towel! It'll get ruined!"
"Yes, it's white, therefore I know it's been washed in hot water and bleached! It's the closest thing to sanitary we've got! So put it on your foot and let's go!"
The man put a drill in his foot, and he's arguing about a towel. Looking back, I probably should have handed him a sanitary napkin. That would've been hilarious.
"Okay, let's go," I said.
"Wait, I wanna clean up this blood first."
"Will you get in the car!"
"There's blood all over the floor!"
"So what? We'll get it later!"
"But it'll dry!"
"You're just standing there, getting more blood on the floor! Get in the damn car!"
And a feeling of deja vu swept over me. Sweet Jesus, deliver me from stupid, stubborn men. I had to keep reminding him to keep pressure on the gaping, gushing wound. I dropped him off at the door of the ER and parked the car. When I went in, the security guard was like, "Are you with Mr. Drillbit?"
Great. Yes, I'm Mrs. Drillbit.
So they checked him in and put him in a room, and the attending doctor looked like a very young Baryshnikov. Husband kept saying it didn't really hurt, but there was no one else in the ER at the time, and Dr. B. looked happy to have something to do, so he did some xrays.
A few minutes later, we heard from the other room, "Hey, he broke it! Come look!"
Dare I say he sounded... excited? So we looked, and sure enough, of all the ways that stupid drill could have landed, it split Husband's bone right down the middle. I don't think he could have done it that well if he'd been trying.
More waiting. Lots of waiting. For antibiotics and a temporary cast and a nurse to clean it and what not. My Saturday afternoon -- shot. Then another doctor came in.
"Are you Mr. Drillbit?"
Oh for God's sake. His mother gave him a name!
"Yeah, that's me."
"Can I see?"
So Husband takes off the gauze to show him, and it starts bleeding again. Thanks, Dr. Nosey! (See? I can make-up annoying nicknames, too!)
"Did it go all the way through?"
"No."
"Oh, cuz that would have been even better!"
So I've learned something today, folks. I've learned that people don't become doctors because they care deeply for their fellow man and want to end suffering. No, they become doctors because the things that make most of us gag, make them go, "Cool!"