Holiday Aftermath Metacarpals

I'm sick.

Really sick. Migraine. And my head feels four times it's normal size and weight and filled with liquid.

Also, I might have broke my toe Christmas day.

Yesterday, my car almost got it's read end shaved off by a driver. How can you miss a white beetle with racing stripes and a huge "53" on the hood and doors? How oblivious to the outdoors can you be? These are the kinds of people who smash into bus benches and clain the bench just "leaped out into the street". I've always said, it doesn't matter how good a driver is, you're only as good as you can be avoiding the idiots.

I tried to work out, and instead, my nose almost caught fire from just breathing rapidly on the treadmill. Nevermind my toe is swollen. Unfortunatly, you can't really put a cast on a toe for a hairline fracture.

About 1o years ago, I broke a toe before on the other foot. Besides cracking my head open when I was 2, this is the only bone I broke in my life. And because of that, I never knew it was broken for 1o years.

I was playing raquetball, and jeez, i'm damn good at it! I leap, I slide, I lunge, I spike the rebound, I play the game. I'll give the crowds a good show. The last sports I did was being a fullback in high school football. And my own team would sack me. Didn't so much like high school football.

A small explaination is in order though: I was dating the sister of the two star linebackers at the time. My first real girlfriend. Real huge guys with nose hair and fractured noses. The ball would snap, and they would crush me or send me flying.

My girlfriend at the time said that they actually liked me, or else they would have made a point to brake bones...which gets me back to the point, eh?

I was going for a shot for the point in raquetball, and ran towards the wall, knowing I could stop short and kick off the wall to get back into play. What I didn't suspect was stepping into a patch of slippery man sweat just before the wall. My foot slid west into the wall, but my toe continued north up it, with all my velocity. Game over for me that day.

I never have broken a limb before, thought it was a very bad sprain...that lasted a few months. I am such a guy. Stupid and ignorant of medical issues.

Over the years, i didn't even notice that my toe healed broken and fused the joints together. I even had a huge bone spurs of that broken fused digit. You'd think I get the hint when people said I had ugly feet (I thought well, it's better than having ugly other parts...). ten long years later, I had enough of the constant pain and slight limp on my left foot that I go to a doctor and do something about it...and find out that I did compound brake that big toe. Time for my first big operation! WooHoo! All I could think of was being alone, and the doctors made a mistake and removed a kidney...

The day of the operation, and i'm nervous enough as it is, the nurse comes in and marks "NO" on the right foot with a sharpie marker. Panic time, huh? When a doctor needs an aid to make sure they cut open the correct foot, you start to think perhaps the unmoving toe wasn't so bad...

To make matters worse, another nurse walks in, and starts to shave the foot for surgery...the wrong foot with "NO" on it. I think from her position, the "NO" looked like "ON", like operate "ON" this foot. One scream and a blood pressure spike later, we're on the same page on which foot again. I don't want to do this now and I looked like a deer in headlights.

Time for the knockout gas. And it went exactlly like this: count backwards from 100...99...98...97...........waking up in a room with a huge wraped up foot and a nurse trying to snap me out of it. I took inventory to see if the correct foot was done, and i wasn't missing any bits. I am so serious.

The best part was the next day: Kim was visting my room when a nurse came in to give me my first taste ever of mophine painkillers. All Kim said was, "you are gonna like this..."

In goes the shot and the nurse tells Kim, "watch this.", and they stare at me. And I thought, this sucks...I feel nothing...and that thought, was the funniest thing EVER!!!!! I was told I had the hugest smile I have ever had and all of a sudden I was flying about the room to sitar music and a monkey in a cowboy outfit was riding a bucking chicken. I even asked if we could do the other foot too.

And now I do brake the other toe. I hope this wasn't a latent morphine addiction reaction.

Does this change anything I said before about the holiday? Nope. This Christmas is still the best ever, for all the best reasons.

I just need steel toe slippers for next Christmas.