Last Friday I went iceskating with a few college friends. After a long 10 min prep time I leaped up onto the ice and gracelessly made my rounds. I checked out cute skate bunnies, made ill attempts to skate past them, and generally tried to look cool. After 15 minutes of ice skating I somehow managed to fall right on my chin. I didn’t brace myself or anything. Blood gushed away and my jaw felt like it went through a trash compactor and after a 2 hour wait in the emergency room I got all stiched up by the doc and went home.
The funny thing is the whole time I felt that was going to be ok like I was going to get back up onto the ice after a brief rest. My friends were telling me to get in the car so they can drive me to hospital but I just kept on looking at my chin, splashed water on it and let the blood run into the sink. I even kept on saying sorry as this lady tried to clean the blood off of my coat and neck.
My question is has anybody here ever been in such self denial after they got injured?
All the time. A few years back I was playing beer softball and a line drive bounced off the ground and hit me in the eye. My eyeglass lens popped out and sliced my face just below the socket. Lots of blood, should’ve gone to the ER, but (a) I was drunk and (b) I felt really stupid [see (a)]. So I just put a wad of napkins on it and kept drinking. It eventually closed up but left me with an unpleasant scar and a shiner from hell.
Then last year I twisted my ankle in our driveway and broke it. Thought it was just sprained. So, I went to Home Depot, walked all around, ran into my SO at Wal-Mart and ended up going to lunch with her, did some grocery shopping, etc. All the while every step is causing excruciating pain and I am now limping like a great big pissed off limping thing. Got home and was on the floor in a fetal position. Finally let my SO drag me to the hospital.
I think it must be a guy thing. Probably comes from a lifetime of being told to “walk it off.”
Yeah, just a couple weeks ago, during a heavy rain, I went to take the trash out. Well, you know those little local newspapers they keep throwing on your porch every week, as if they’re saying “Here, you throw this away for me”? Well, there was one lying right there on the second step. With trash bags in both hands, I boldly stepped down. As the combination of squishy paper and slippery plastic make no friction whatsoever beneath my feet, they quickly went up and out in front of me. Trash bags flew as I swiftly placed my tailbone right on the corner of the second step and my head gracefully bounced off the top step. I layed there for about ten minutes, trying to figure out how to keep my head from throbbing like that. I tried to stand up and realized that I couldn’t. So, I layed there for a few more minutes. Finally, I managed to crawl back into the house and thought, “yeah, I can just sleep this off”. Instead, I passed out from the pain right there on the kitchen floor. I had a heck of a time trying to explain it to the SO, when she got home to find the trash in the grass, and me passed out on the floor…
Luckily, nothing was broken, but I had a hell of a time sitting for next week or so…
But I would have loved to see the whole act from outside my body. I’m sure it looked almost staged, it was so perfect. 