BREAKing News: Mom On 60-Day DL

You are so getting coal in your stocking next Christmas!

I've been in the ER about 15-20 times with various family members (and twice for myself) over the past couple of years, and the nurses & techs actually recognize me in out-of-ER-context places like the supermarket or gym... so it's hard to pick just one fun emergency occasion.  My favorite might have been last year when my mom fell at home and broke her hip (2nd broken hip in less than two years) on the same day that my dad was starting chemotherapy.  And when I called one of my sisters to let her know Mom's in the hospital again, her response was, "Geez... sounds like their day is going almost as bad as mine today."  At which point I hung up on her.

with calling 911 from a cell phone.  Apparently they can't identify where you're calling from when you call from a cell, so it gets routed through the CHP dispatcher or something like that.  I had to call once when a guy was trying to throw his girlfriend out of a moving car driving down our street in Sacramento.  I was on hold for something like 10 minutes and then they were gone because they had to route me to the Sacto PD.

All in all, apparently it's much better to call 911 from a land line.

I'm glad your Mom is OK, Nico.  No one needs this during the holidays.

Toss up...

My dad cut his knee with a chainsaw, then drove himself to the ER. Very bloody.

Or...

When I was younger I got a chunk of metal stuck in my eye.  The ER doc tried to remove it by digging around it with a needle. Not cool.

I could have sworn you wrote that "Scooter Libby" visited your mom in the hospital.

I got a nice little sunburn after spending a Sunday at Raging Waters with my shirt off and no sun screen (yes, I know that was stupid). By Tuesday night, I was ready to die just to be rid of the agony - my upper back was burned to a crisp, and it felt like someone had injected sulfuric acid under my skin. About 4am I woke up Mrs doctorK to take me to the ER. The ER doctor called my insurance plan to see if they would cover the visit. The on-call doctor said I should just wait two or three more hours until the urgent care clinic opened (by this time I was crying like a baby). Thankfully, the ER people decided to treat me anyway with cold saline wraps, Atarax for the itching, and some kind of steroid (I think it had a Balco label) for the burns. After sleeping most of the day I was fine.

As it turned out, this event occurred during health benefits open enrollment at my job, so I quickly dumped my existing plan (I think it was TakeCare - screw you, bastard on-call doc) for something else.

I've never gone to the ER. Not when I tore up my knee, not when I had 2nd degree burns on my back, not when my kid split his head open and needed stiches! Of course, on that last one it was the middle of the day and our doctor's office was open so we could go there.

Take the pain! It builds character.

next time -- perhaps a trip to the zoo?

But seriously, thanks for the reminder about First Aid classes.  My CPR/First Aid certificate is lapsed and I want to renew it.  The Red Cross is the place to look, although I originally got my certificate at my former office --they installed automatic defibrillators in the building and they needed to get 10% of the employees trained to use them.  

know if I made it to the ER, since to this day, I can't remember the incident. I was at track practice, and was practcing the High Jump, I was pretty good, as the bar was about 6 1/2 feet.  Well the Pole Vaulters were practicing, and borrowed one of our landing mats.  I had just came back from the locker room, and it was my turn, now my style was I glided in the air quite a bit, so I usually landed on the second mat, but not paying enough attention, I apparently missed the entire mat, since there was only one, and I apparently landed on the back of my head.  To this day, I still don't remember jumping, but my friends told me about it the next day at school.  I remember going to practice, and the next thing I remember I was in my mom's car on the way home.

... except I got to ride to the hospital in the back of a Mustang.  Three-place break and dislocation -- foot was roughly 90 degrees from normal orientation.  Coach said "it looks like a bad sprain" and then threw-up.  I went on lifetime injured-reserve.

besides you, Nico, who knows your mother well, so you know I really mean it when I wish her all the best in her recovery. And I'm very amused by the picture of her tearing around the house on the scooter.

I'm sure you already know this, but you're very fortunate to have a mother who is so lively in spirit. I'm sure this trip to the DL will not be any sort of setback to her career. Based on her comparables, I figure she's got another 25 years in her, at least.

thing as that much of an impediment for this team this year. is she lefty or righty?

I'm glad your Mom is okay, Nico.  I guess Tilden can be a dangerous place.  At least you guys didn't get lost looking for an Xmas tree and have to live under an overpass for 3 days in freezing weather.

Now, my ER story:

This happened back when the now-Mrs.-Nick and I were living in Oakland.  Over our bed we had a sort of headboard with a shelf, and over that was a built-in shelf that our cats liked to sit on.  Cats like looking down on things.

So, one morning, we were sleeping (back before we had kids we used to do that in the morning), and one of our cats, the dearly-departed Hank, decided he wanted to get up on the built-in shelf.  So he jumped up on the bed -- right next to my face, waking me up.  I was lying on my side, blearily awake, and watched as Hank wiggled his butt and jumped up to the headboard on his way to the built-in.

Except, Hank slipped on something that was sitting on the headboard, failed to scramble his way up, and fell down.

On my face.

With his big, rear claws fully extended.  You know, the claws that cats use to rend the flesh off the bunny they're wrestling with?  Those claws.

I got up screaming and cursing -- Hank had torn a gash at least an inch long across the right side of my nose, and not a superficial scratch, a real gash that went more than half the way through the side of my nose.  Now-Mrs.-Nick woke up in response to the noise -- and started laughing.

But not as much as the RNs laughed in the ER when we got over there about 15 minutes later, with blood pouring out of my nose.  You can't stich a nose, evidently, so they used those steri-strip things and wrapped my nose up.

That was over 10 years ago, and I still have a scar on my nose.  Usually, if anyone asks, I tell them I got it in a knife-fight.  But wherever cats go after they die, Hank is sitting there telling his cat friends about how he kicked his human's ass and sent him to the ER with one claw.

I am glad that you were with her when it happened.

When i was four, some older guys were chopping wood for a logfire and i just had to help. Well, help was me stretching my hand over the log just at the right moment to meet the axe and having a part of my middle finger chopped off. Didn´t hurt a bit - a nice, clean cut. I picked up the finger and went over to my 15-year old sister (rather than confronting my pretty strict parents with the changed physionomy of their youngest one) and asked her, bleeding and sans finger: "You think we have to tell Mom and Dad?".

My mother had a heart attack at our home. It was in the middle of the night and there was a terrible snow storm. The ambulance came and I went with them and about 5 minutes on our way we got stuck in the snow. So there was this surreal image, an ambulance on an empty, snowed street in the middle of the city and paramedics and me pushing it and clearing up the snow.

Luckily we managed to get it going again in time and made it to the hospital before it was too late.

Which trail in Tilden was the scene of the fall?  Was it by that creekbed where the old autowreck used to be? Inspiration Trail?

I keep visualizing different routes, and I recall many of the the slips and falls I've had. But, fortunately, no major effects like your Mom.

Here's to her fast recovery in the New Year!
(click!).