..literally.
I got together with friends from my BC group the other
day. Elaine, who moved to Germany last year and was in town, and Terri
from over in Tampa. They came down to the USGS and I gave them a tour of
the buildings. Then we had lunch downtown at Moon Under Water, a nice
British Colonial pub in downtown St. Petersburg.
Afterwards, I walked back to work. It was
beautiful day and supposed to be only a 15-minute walk. One of the last cool days we’ll get before
the summer closes in again and you start to melt the minute you walk out the
door. The walk was to be my exercise for
the day. But here’s the thing. I didn't make it all the way back to work.
I was about two blocks away when I tripped on a raised
sidewalk edge. You know the kind.
It’d been pushed up by tree beside the road. Not much, only about an
inch or so. But it was enough. A hard stub of the toe and I couldn't catch
myself. I went down. Hard.
My first thought
was, there goes my lunch. I had been
taking my leftovers back to work for the next day. Second, there went my glasses skittering
along the concrete. My
less-then-one-week-old glasses. I also felt
my mouth connect with the sidewalk.
I sat up, without thinking about injuries, and looked
down at the sidewalk. Drip, drip. Oh Crap! I pulled out my handkerchief
and put it to my chin. Yup, a fair amount of blood. In addition
that, the palms of both hands were scraped up.
I had scrapes on my chin and mouth, and I realized later that I had whacked
my knee on the concrete. I did not crack my teeth, thankfully, or bite my
tongue. Lord only knows how I didn’t.
A very nice woman who lives in the apartment next to
where I fell, came rushing out. “Are you OK? I heard you fall.
Don't get up. How can I help?” She was a retired kindergarten
teacher. All those caring instincts kicked in for her, which kicked in my
first aid training. Dumb to sit up without thinking. But that was done already. I decided to sit and wait and figure out if I
was OK. She offered me a phone (because I didn't have mine!) and let me call
the office, where I got hold of Chris to come rescue me. I figured it
wasn’t a good idea to finish walking back to the office.
We had Molly take a look at my chin when we got back.
Molly is a former med-tech. The question was not if it was OK, but
what level of care to seek next (ER, Urgent Care, or CVS for butterfly
sutures.) We opted for Urgent Care and Chris drove me up to the one near
work. We figured that would take less time then the ER. It gave me time to recover enough to drive
myself home. But it still took about 3 hours before we got back to the
office.
My booby prize for this little adventure was 4
stitches in my chin. Luckily, its somewhat under my chin, so even once
it's healed the scar won't be that noticeable. I’ve got a good lump there
now that I’m hoping will go away with time.
My palms are healing nicely, the right healed quickly, though the left,
because it was somewhat worse for wear, is taking a bit longer. As for my knee, well, that may take a while
longer yet to get back to normal. I hit
it pretty hard.
And my glasses? They survived, though I don’t know how. Perhaps it was the way I landed. Or perhaps I just sacrificed my chin to save
them. After all, the chin will
heal. The glasses won’t.
