Another Week, Another Sunday in the Hospital

September 17th, 2007 by Potato

We went Halloween shopping this weekend, getting ideas for costumes and decorations (it’s actually a bit of a late start for us, but don’t worry, we’re still going to throw a rocking Halloween party — if you read the blog and want an invite, just send me an email, and don’t be too weirdo internet-stalky. Also, come in costume). Then, we brought the 7 boxes of Halloween decorations out of the basement (see picture with the cat for scale) and started decorating.

Towards the end of the day, I went back to the kitchen to start on dinner while Wayfare continued to decorate. I hear “do you think the table is sturdy enough to stand on?” Without thinking, I say something along the lines of “it’s a pretty sturdy table.” A few minutes later, there’s a giant crash from the front of the house, and I walk back to find the table on its side and Wayfare holding her hand yelling “get me something to stop the bleeding!” Turns out it was a pretty sturdy table, just not a particularly well balanced one. She grabbed the chandelier going down, smashing a lightbulb with her hand.

She’s got this nasty gash up her hand that’s a good 3 cm long, and there’s all kinds of skin missing so you can see different layers of tissue, and that is just not going to heal pretty. In addition to that are two other cuts on her hand that would be noteworthy all on their own. So I got her patched up, finished dinner, cleaned up the glass, and then we took a little trip up to urgent care to have it checked out (we threw the gauze on pretty quickly without really checking for any leftover shards of glass). The doctor there was young (I’d guess just about my age or younger), and she missed the fact that Wayfare had a cut on the palm of her hand when she did the inspection of the big wound, so I wasn’t having a huge deal of confidence in her. She didn’t seem to do too rough a job on the sutures though, and I’m especially glad we went after I saw how many stitches she got: 15, including 3 in the smaller, but deeper, cut in her hand.

The chandelier has seen better days. I was afraid the one arm that she broke the bulb out of would never take another bulb, but apart from cracking the decorative plastic, it doesn’t look to be too bad. Of course, the screw-in base of the bulb was torn right out, so something had to have been warped for that to happen (perhaps the impact deformed the bulb to yank it out?). The top of the chandelier where it attaches to the chain has also been warped, and she thinks that’s where she grabbed it with her good hand. I’m glad the whole thing stayed attached to the ceiling: as bad as her hand is, things could have gone even worse if she landed with a hundred-pound chandelier on her chest.

Cat with boxes of Halloween decorations

2 Responses to “Another Week, Another Sunday in the Hospital”

  1. Wayfare Says:

    Eww… reading that was rather graphic and disgusting, perhaps even moreso than it was in person, and I was there. At least you didn’t put a picture up (although I think the smiley face seeping through the bandage was kind of awesome).

    For clarity’s sake (and to lessen the pathetic picture that your readers now have of me falling off a table and hanging from a chandelier), I’d just like to point out that this isn’t just some sad little chandelier bulb cut. Oh no, I full on smashed the plastic casing and bent metal *with my flesh*.

  2. Ben Says:

    I’d like to come to the party, Hallowe’en is by far my favorite holiday. Hopefully I’ll be done harvest by then so I’ll actually be able to enjoy it…