Not Part of the Plan

I am writing from a relatively familiar post, although Jon would say that is an exaggeration.  I am sitting in a Kaiser examining room, just a few feet from my grubby husband who is lying quietly on a narrow stretcher-bed, getting his brow stitched back together.  This is exactly why we belong to Kaiser.  On many occasions in the last 30 years, we have needed medical attention.  It is never quick, but it is always better than going to an emergency room, or so we believe. It is familiar and comfortable and they have all our records.

Anyway, just as we were finally getting into the car to go to Loudoun -- after a very frustrating morning for Jon, trying to fix a tire that refused to be fixed -- I was sitting in the car waiting for him to load up his armload of stuff -- he tripped over a stick and fell hard on his knees.  I couldn't see what was going on, exactly, but he was clearly injured and upset.  When he took his hands from his face eventually, I saw the blood on his forehead and I reached for my phone. Jon's mother knows what this is like, because he had frequent trips to get stitches during his childhood.  He said he wanted to assess the damage himself but I knew we were going to Kaiser.  For a minute I thought that the saw that he had dropped had been what had cut him, and this was a horrifying idea.  He kept saying that it felt like something blunt.  After thinking it through, he decided that the tire in his hands had jammed against his glasses and broken the lens and that is what made the hole.  

While he was in Mom's house cleaning it up and getting something to hold against the gash to stop the bleeding, I stayed on the phone waiting for attention. We don't like to call 911 unless things are truly dire.  Eventually we got sorted out and headed to Kaiser where we have been slowly making our way through the process of determining whether there is anything else still in that yucky hole (I would never be a good doctor), and now she is stitching up the deepest layer.

We had been hoping to go to Loudoun so he could finish a project that he has been working on for a few weeks, and I could plant the first tomatoes.  The tomatoes are out in the car, with the windows rolled down a little so they won't cook.  I think we won't make it out there today, and we will need a new plan.  I am glad he didn't poke his eye out.  He needs new glasses, and that is a pain, but it is not tragic.  

I had just breathed a sigh of relief that we got through the Seders without any health disruptions. This time Easter was the holiday to spend in the medical world.  Very quiet here. While we waited for the X-Ray results, I read aloud to him from the Kindle -- a short story that is based in Boston, about an older man who thinks about Maimonides and Dickens.  It distracted us both until the doctor came in to get to work.

From my own experience getting stitched up here once, his scar might end up being kind of pirate-like but he will be fine.  These are not plastic surgeons, they are emergency stitcher-uppers.  By now I know enough about watching sterile procedures that I am satisfied that everything is to code.  I just hope the local anesthetic lasts as long as this procedure because he will not tell anyone if it wears off.  Judging from his breathing, I am guessing it is wearing off right now. Ugh.

Anyway, that's the news.  It is a deep wound, but it is almost closed up.  Three layers of stitches. Jon used to keep a running count of his stitch total, but I think that number is long gone.