Monday, April 03, 2006

Weekend in Review

I have had a great time chilling out this weekend. Wednesday was the last day of work before the 4 day weekend and we had a crucial pool game against Bugils that night. I honestly believe we have the better team but we lost to them 3-9!!! It was a miserable loss but our joy was not about to be dampened by these trivial matters. We were with a large group of friends and the booze was flowing. We continued on to Manna House, and I must have been there till about 3am before I headed home.

As usual upon arriving home I switched on a movie, smoked a cigarette, and got into bed. I am guessing it must have been about 5am when I woke up to turn off my television. I have a large glass coffee table and couch in my room. For some reason the bastard was just a little to close to my bed and I stumbled over it. The next thing I remember, I was sitting on the floor with shards of broken glass all around me. After attempting to clean some of it up I noticed some blood on the floor so I decide to check this out in the bathroom mirror. There was a small cut on the right-center of my back. Though it was small it was gushing with blood, so I jumped in the shower until I saw no more red flow. I wrapped up in a towel and got back into bad, settling on to dealing with this later.


When I woke up later that afternoon, there was a fair amount of blood on the towel and some on my bed. But over all there seemed to be no more blood flow. But as I was having a cup of tea, recovering from the previous night’s endeavors, I realized that there was still some blood trickling down my back. I HATE hospitals and would do anything to avoid them but past experience involving infections has taught that it is much better to nip a problem in the bud. I called my cousin Inny over immediately to come evaluate the damage I had done and decide whether I needed medical attention or not. By the time he got to my house the cut was full of this dried bloody gunk that he said had to be removed or cleaned. He convinced me to go to the hospital just for cleaning and dressing.



I hate hospitals and I hate needles even more. It seems silly for a guy with so many tattoos to be freaked out by needles but I am telling you, injections hurt a whole lot more. Maybe it is just some conditioned response from my childhood, but the fact remains the same. I had Inny document the entire process, partly because I don’t trust the doctors, and also for your viewing pleasure. The clean up process as you can imagine was extremely agonizing. They first used needles to soften and remove the dried blood. Then they went all out with a set of pliers that dug right into my back. I could feel them poking at my spine! Warning, this could get a bit ugly.


They kept using these cotton buds to wipe up the inside of the cut and the increasing blood flow. They were supposed to stop the blood but instead they made it come back! And cotton has never felt so abrasive before. I could feel every little fiber scratching away at my naked flesh as the nurse dragged his swabs over my open wounds.


By now as you can imagine, I was in a whole new world of pain. The last serious injury I had was probably The Burn last year. I have had cuts and scrapes here and there. Some sprains and near breaks as well. I am pretty accident prone I guess but as I sat there on the hospital bed, I wondered ‘why me?’ I always get into some mess like this right before a good vacation. Had I been planning to go to the beach I would not have been able to swim. And I was planning to hang out at the pool this weekend but I would no longer be able to. I am turning 29 this year. I cant keep getting onto situations like this.


After the cut was all cleaned up, the doctor came back to take a look. I suggested that butterfly stitches would get the job done rather than him actually going in with a needle and thread. Stitches scare the hell out of me. But as you can see from below, the cut turned out to be pretty wide and the butterflies would not hold. He set them like that for a while but the blood soaked through and tore them off. I reluctantly allowed him to go in for the real thing.


There were about 3 cuts on my back but this was the largest ad deepest one. When they set me up with this surgical cloth that had a hole in it I felt pretty nervous. I saw him stringing out the needle and the anticipation was horrible.



Of course he gave me a few shots of anesthetic to numb the area. They worked pretty well. But I felt each shot enter the wound and the cold liquid stream out of the needle and into my flesh.


I did not actually realize when he has started sewing. I could only feel some tugging against my skin. The wound it self was comfortably numb.



Before long, Inny informed me that the first stitch was in place and it looked pretty neat.


After a little more tugging and pulling the second one was done. This time I did feel some painful pinching. But it was nothing that I could not handle by biting down on the pillow.


Finally the doctor settled on 3 stitches, although he was initially planning to do 4. I think he was pretty pestered by me asking ‘are we done yet’ every 30 seconds.


I spent the rest of the weekend at home and I had an awesome time doing that as well. Painkillers are awesome company when you have nothing much to do but lie on your side and watch movies. We watched the England vs. India second game o0n Friday and India won again. That was pleasing. We ended up playing cards till about 3 that morning as well. It sucks that I missed out on cricket this week but I should get my stitches out before the next match. Despite this accident I still had an awesome long weekend.

5 comments:

AmitD said...

Hmmmmm... avi getting drunk and falling through a glass table. Amit not getting drunk and chilling at home and not falling through a glass table. Hell, I would still to have your weekend man...hehe

Anonymous said...

bloody amazing. I just love your stories, even to the point of wishing you more painful occurences. No, sorry, that's mean. How come toxic shock, legionnaires disease, tetanus and aids did not cross your mind at that time??

get well soon. (Inny needs a medal)

Shan said...

Duuude - OMG what bad luck (yes I remember the burn pix too).
Hope it's not hurting too much today.

Indo Dreamin' said...

Amit - The last time I got damaged was at whitesands, and you were there.

Anony - Who are you? Inny does deserve a medal though. He actually dragged his ass out of bed and came to my rescue. No questions asked, no complaining.

Shan - Well, I got a tetanus shot in my arm and that has been all swollen and painful. For some reason it did not get absorbed. I went to change the dressing yesterday and they had put a large plaster on the cut. As you can see I have a decent amount of hair on my back so when they took the plaster off... I don’t think I will be waxing my back anytime soon. I swear there were tears in my eyes. I don’t know how women do this stuff.

Shan said...

Waxing is hell, believe me I am speaking from personal experience -and now you can too, sorta :D

Right now I've been putting off getting my eyebrows tweezed - hair by little hair is ripped out one by one. That really hurts!