Talking it on the chin…

..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.