Monday, Bloody Monday!

This week started off with two trips to the vet, a stop at the farm supply store, a trip to the grocery store and ended up in the ER.

Our cat, Eddie, had been ill for quite a while, and had pretty much stopped eating. We’d tried special food from the vet, and tempted him with all of his favorite foods – mashed potatoes, chicken, milk (only a little bit, as it really isn’t good for cats), canned food – but he was starving himself to death. I called the vet, and went up a little before noon to have that dirty deed done. They told me the food had a money-back guarantee, and if I’d return it they’d refund the money. Since the blasted food has set us back $60 for an 8 pound bag, it was well worth a second trip, so after lunch I took care of that and did the rest of my errands.

There is one place in the furnace room that does not have insulation in the roof, so when we replaced the tiles in the bathroom ceiling we held on to most of the old ones, which I intended to staple across the rafters.

After supper I brought in a pile of old tiles, found the super stapler, and lugged the stepstool into the furnace room. I’d just begun to staple the first tile, when I suddenly I began to fall backwards, landing on the floor covered with dry dogfood, and a very sore head. No biggie, until I looked in the bathroom mirror and discovered blood dripping off my chin! To make a long story a little bit shorter, I’d split the skin on the back of my head, (swelled to egg size) and scalp wounds always bleed like crazy.

I wrapped my head in a towel the way you do when you shampoo your hair, and The Squire hustled me into his car. We discussed going to the local Doc-in-a-Box, but decided to go to the ER instead. It was nearly Standing Room Only when we went in, and in retrospect we obviously should have turned around and gone back to the clinic. Anyway, we arrived at 9:30 PM, and about an hour after I registered a nurse took me into a cubby hole and got my vitals. She removed my towel, inspected the goose egg on my head, and wrapped me with gauze. A couple of hours after that I was taken for a CAT scan. And many hours after that I finally saw the doctor. She asked The Squire if I was acting normally, to which he replied “Well, normally for her”, again inspected my scalp and said there were no edges to be sewn together, as I am scrapped the skin, instead of splitting it. I asked if she could pull the edges together anyway; maybe tightening my scalp would act as a facelift, but she demurred. Another wrap with gauze, and we FINALLY walked out of the hospital at 6 AM.

I was still bleeding and my head hurt like blazes. Putting my weary noggin on a pillow was not going to be easy, and it was a given that I’d lose my turban in my sleep, ending up with blood all over the pillow.

And then The Squire had an inspiration!

Several years ago he was in the hospital and was issued a pack of adult male Depends, most of which are still hiding under the bed. I pulled a pair on my head over my gauze turban, with the waist as a hat band. The extra padding in the back cushioned my wound and soaked up any blood that oozed out. Worked like a charm! The pillowcase stayed clean and the “hat” didn’t fall off overnight. We had a bowl of soup at 7 in the morning, and tumbled into bed.

So – what caused my tumble, other than my own innate clumsiness? Well, for a change it wasn’t me. The culprit was the wooden step stool. This stool is at least as old as I am; I remember sitting on the top step, and using the seat as a desk before I even started school, and it may possibly have been at my grandparents’ house before it came to live with us. I don’t know if it was simply old and tired, or just not built to hold my excess avoir du poids.