Thursday, August 14, 2008

Bloody Luau

I'm really late in posting this blog but it's kinda funny so here you go. Last month our church had a luau party with fire dancers and everything. We have had to do some fundraising for a trip our youth were taking so we had set up a dessert auction and also a photo booth at the luau. Angelo had done this at work before where you take pictures of people in front of a green screen and then have them choose a background for their pictures. It turns out really cute. Angelo had borrowed the green screen from work and we went down early to set up. The screen sits on to a metal frame that you can move up and down. Unfortunately, once the party started we had a mishap and the frame came falling down. Angelo caught it as it came down but in the process the metal part of the frame sliced his finger wide open. He didn't really notice until he felt the wetness running down his arm and examined the area to see what had happened. He had a deep cut on one of his knuckles and he was dripping blood all over the floor. So he rushed to the bathroom to try and get it to stop bleeding and I was left trying to clean the blood up off the floor. I have spoken of my aversion to blood before and I can tell you that I still feel the same way. A little is ok but once there are actually drips I'm in trouble. My ears started ringing and my vision was getting a little tunneled. My favorite part was when I was leaning over cleaning up the blood all over the floor with some napkins, barely holding it together, and some idiot who was standing there waiting in the food line laughing, asked me, "Is that Angelo's blood?" What I wanted to say was, "Yes, you moron, my husband is bleeding all over the place and I get to clean it up, hope you enjoy your food!" But I just nodded and went back to smearing the blood around. Once I figured I couldn't do that anymore I went to find Angelo. I basically floated to the bathroom, ears still ringing, and found him with his hand over a blood speckled sink. I had to lean against the wall once I saw that. Then Angelo goes, "Look, it's really deep, I think it hit the bone." I looked away and shouted, "Are you crazy! I can't look at that! Dude, I'm barely hanging on here. What do you want to do?" He wrapped in in paper towels and went to our car's first aid kit to get some gauze. I couldn't believe I was left to clean up more blood! So I quickly wiped the sink down and headed back toward the party. I had to sit down before my body forced me to LAY down. One of the girls in our ward who is a nurse said Angelo better go to urgent care to get it stitched up. I tried to get out of going to the place where there would likely be even more blood but eventually conceded. So we left the picture taking to Ann (thanks Ann - you're a lifesaver!) and we went to get him fixed up. Of course we couldn't leave until we got our luau picture taken! (Ann had told me I looked pretty green by this time so here...) That's pretty much what we looked like when we arrived at urgent care - Hawaiian shirts and all. It didn't take long for us to get admitted and soon we were in our own little curtained room. They cleaned the wound and decided the best thing was to glue it shut. It was pretty weird. Here's what it looked like glued together.

The best part of urgent care are the conversations you get to eavesdrop on. The guy right next to us, sharing our curtain, had some kind of golf injury. (I know, who gets hurt playing golf?) He thought he had hurt his ribs or something while he'd been playing. The male nurse had gone in to discuss the x-rays they had taken. Here's how that conversation went:

Nurse; "Nothing is broken, you must have just pulled some of the muscles in your back."
Golfer: "Ok."
Nurse: "What we suggest you do is get some Icy Hot Balm. It comes in a blue jar. Get that stuff and rub in on your rib cage a few times a day. Just be careful not to touch your testicles after that because that stuff burns!" (Obviously speaking as a voice of experience!)
Golfer: "Uh, ok."Angelo and I had immediately broken into a fit of silent laughter when we heard that. (You know where you are laughing hysterically but are keeping quiet so no one knows you were listening?) That almost made the whole trip worthwhile. The trip cost us $75 but can you really put a price tag on good advice?

2 comments:

BatMom said...

i am so glad you finally blogged about this! because i am so nosy, i have to know who the idiot was that asked if it was angelo's blood. but everyone reading must know that katie looked worse than angelo! i was way more worried about her than if his finger was going to need to be amputated!

Naomi said...

I'm glad I wasn't there and read this in my own home so that I could laugh out loud! That is HILARIOUS!!