Friday night E.R.

I spent all of Friday evening in the Ottumwa Regional Hospital E.R.
No… Cooper did not hurt himself.
No… I did not go in to labor.
Yes… I did stab myself with a knife while I was cooking dinner. Seriously, quit laughing. It was bad enough that once I FINALLY got into an exam room for a doctor to look at it, I could hear the nurse briefing the other nurse in the hallway “Room 24… Girl who stabbed herself… accidently”. Thank you God that she added the accidently.
At about 6:30 I was putting the finishing touches on some super yummy Chicken Rotell and I was trying to split apart two frozen Schwanns garlic biscuits so I needed a prying tool. What better then the sharp knife I just cut the chicken up with? It was the closest thing to me on the counter. In hindsight… maybe not such a good idea. Anyway, about thirty seconds later the palm of my hand was squirting blood straight out like a cheap horror flick and I was screaming for Otey at the top of my lungs. He was switching the laundry in the basement for me and ran upstairs and saw blood filling the sink. He yelled “put some pressure on it” and went to frantically gathering Cooper up. Thank goodness it was an artery in my hand and not a big one. I would have for sure bled out as long as it took us to get out of the house. I stood over the sink squeezing my hand while Otey ran around putting socks and a coat on Cooper, gathering his wallet and cellphone, getting me shoes, baking a cake, filing his nails, brushing his teeth, vacuuming… anyway… a short time later we were off on a family field trip to the ER. I’m sure when I came trotting in the VERY crowded ER with blood covering my hands, a dishtowel trying to catch it, and makeup all down my face people were sure I had murdered someone. They checked me right out, decided that the bleeding was slow enough now that I wasn’t going to die, and told me to have a seat over in the germ infested (seriously there was a lady puking & about fifteen people coughing up a lung) waiting room. I politely explained to the nurse that I was pregnant, I had a healthy two year old waiting in the car (Cooper and Otey went out to watch a movie and try to keep Cooper away from the sick people once we determined I was going to live) and I had NO intentions of catching this awful flu everyone was talking about. She gave me a little mask to wear (just like McDreamy on Grey’s) and told me to sit in the hall right by where the doors were opening and shutting. There I sat… for almost three hours. I kept thinking… forget it, I’m just going home. Then the back of my hand started really swelling up and my ring finger above the stab wound in my palm started to tingle… like it was asleep. The very nice nurses told me that the ER had been this busy all week. That the doctors offices in town were so swamped with the flu patients that they were telling people who called that they couldn’t take them… just to go to the ER. When I finally got in to see the doctor he said the knife had went in about a half an inch and that there could be nerve damage (that explained the tingling) he glued it shut, said I needed an up to date Tetanus shot, and ordered an x-ray to see if there were any bone chips. Over the next twenty minutes or so we determined that I couldn’t have the Tetanus shot because I was pregnant (THANK YOU GOD), and I also played the pregnant card to get out of the x-ray. There was nothing they could do if I did chip the bone, so why bother? Moral of this whole draw out story… My left hand is pretty much out of commission right now… swelled up… sore… and tingly. He said it could takes months for the tingles to go away… if they ever do. In the three hours I sat in the hallway I saw about 15 young mothers come in carrying puking, coughing, crying babies. It made me very grateful I had a stab wound. I have to end this by telling you my SUPER STAR husband took Cooper home, fed him dinner, put him to bed, cleaned up the crime scene in the kitchen, put away the dinner that I was cooking, got someone to sit with Cooper while he slept, and was back at the hospital just as I went in to see the doctor. Oh ya… and he let me sleep in this morning while he cooked breakfast. Husband of the year… for sure.