Injuries

Last night while I was advising Indoor Percussion (on aesthetics; I did indoor guard for four years) I fell off a stool and hurt myself. I had been crouching of the stool when it slide off the podium and I toppled off backwards. I broke the leg off the stool and I garnered some lovely elbow rug burns and a severely bruised ass. It's a light purple blob the size of a baseball dead center of my right buttcheek.  Needless to say I slept on my stomach last night and I've been leaning into my left cheek all throughout class today.

For some reason I seem somewhat accident prone.

For example, freshman year I managed to scratch my nipple with my nails while in the shower. I look down to see blood gushing where blood should not be gushing. I wore a band-aid pasty for a couple of days.

Last year rounding a corner outside a building I pointed out an ice puddle and told everyone not to slip on it. And then not two seconds later I was down for the count. That also resulted in an ass bruise.

In November I fell down the stairs of Estate. In October someone quickly backed into me, hitting the large object I was holding and sending it into my stomach. That bruise was pretty purple.

Sophomore year of high school I broke my thumb during band camp with my guard rifle. Guard in general was the culprit for my continuous broken nails and a lot of bruises (so many that my weight training teacher called a teammates house asking if she was abused).

On the way to a White Trash Party I accidentally scratched my right flank (kidney area) while pulling up my too-big man-pants. I didn't realize I had even scratched myself at all until I found the bloodied scab the next morning. I still have the scar.

My most painful injuries involve my toes. I broke the baby toe of my left foot and got the big toenail on my right foot torn off in a game of dodgeball.

First came the broken toe. I was flumped in the rocking chair staring aimlessly at the ceiling when the phone rang. My home phone has four rings before it goes to the answering machine. It was on ring number three before I realized that I was the only person home and the phone was not answering itself.

I launch myself from the chair, desperate to get to the phone before it goes to the answering machine. I'm not sure why since I wasn't waiting for anybody important to call or anything. I just had to answer the phone. Maybe it's because I really hate when I answer the phone and the answering machine has already picked up, so I have to hear our recorded message before I start talking. Then later I have to listen to the entire conversation again before it can be deleted from the answering machine. It's better to just avoid all that jazz in the first place.

As I rounded the island in the middle of our kitchen in order to make it to the phone, half of my left foot smashed into the wall. I stumble and bunny hop the rest of the way to the phone which I answer half crying. It turns out it was one of my neighbor trying to borrow eggs or something. Whatever. I'm in too much pain to care. I simply slid down to the floor and bit my lip trying not to cry but tears leak out anyway. It hurt. When Mom got home she took a look at it and just thought it would be bruised for a while.

I limped through school the next day in my chunky man Vans (with throwback Nintendo shoelaces. Damn I'm cool). I got home and took my sock off to find that my foot had swollen to some horrifically not normal size and that my foot was literally bruised black and purple. I showed Mom and she was all, "Well maybe it is broken." Several x-rays and hours later my baby toe was officially broken and I had a special shoe to wear for a month.

It's funny, 'cause my brother broke his baby toe doing the same thing (running into a wall) at Grammy's house not two months later.

The toenail story takes place during Thanksgiving break of 2006. Since Maryland is dumb and doesn't give students a full week for a holiday that the Pilgrims obviously intended to be celebrated for a full week the first two days are "teacher inservice days" when they give parent-teacher conferences. I elected to go along with Mom to Danny's (my brother) PTC. There were a bunch of kids playing dodgeball in the gym so Danny and I decided to join them. We had just been to the shoe store and I was wearing my brand new fake crocs. They are not conducive to playing dodgeball so I threw them against the wall and played in my bare feet.

During the game the ball landed at my feet. Some kid on the other team--he was like six or seven--slide-tackled the ball but ended up slide-tackling my foot instead. I thought I had just stubbed my toe on his shoe because, yeah, it hurt, but not that bad. So imagine my surprise when I next look down to find my right big toe gushing blood all over the place.

I limp to the classroom with my Mom in it. She gave me a look like 'WTF did you do now?', but when she saw my toe she dragged me to the main office. Thankfully even though there were no kids the nurse was still working that day (school system dollars hard at work). She managed to quell the torrent of blood my toe kept producing and gave me some gauze.

Later that night I was examining the damage when I realize that my toenail is loose. Mom and I make a trip to Nighttime Pediatrics. The nurse doesn't really know what to do with me, beyond tell me to keep it wrapped, soak it in Benadine, and try and remove the nail.

Mom took the 'remove the nail' part seriously. This is how we both end up on her bathroom floor; my foot in her lap, a pair of nail clippers in her hand. It was literally the most painful thing I've ever had to endure in my life. The nail was mostly separated from the nailbed, except for two little strings of skin keeping it in place. Obviously the nail is going nowhere without the skin getting cut off. It took over an hour and a lot of deep breathing on my end to get the damn thing off. And even then I had to keep it wrapped and wear a special shoe again.

To this day it doesn't grow right. I think I damaged the nailbed permanently, so the nail only grows halfway and then starts to make a hollow little cave. Gross, but there's really nothing I can do about it.