How To Destroy Christmas and New Years For Yourself In One Go.

On Christmas day my brother and I went bike riding. I haven't been for years and was wondering how good my balancing skills were. Apparently crap because even with him holding my handle bars to balance me while I tried to get my water bottle out, I stacked it quite eloquently into gravel, leaves, a Doberman and a lady asking if I was ok as she continued to run passed me and into the distance.

 

Initially I thought I would pass out. I had landed on my right knee and there was a nice little horrible bloody wound on it full of gravel, leaves, and my pants. 

My brother I could tell wasn't sure what to do because I was laughing and asking him to take a photo of it while almost in the foetal position crouched over my handle bars.

He opted to ring our Mum to come and get us. She could hear me laughing in the background and thought we weren't being serious. She then yelled a little at us because it was ridiculous of us to think we could fit both adult bikes, a 6ft teenage boy, and an injured fainting chick in her Hyundai Excel.

I hung up on her and we walked a little way before I felt I could ride the rest of the way home, all the whiles with a fair amount of blood trickling down my leg. We passed the lady and again she asked if I was ok? What I should have said was ‘No, but the adrenalin has kicked in now and my Mother clearly is no longer the adult in our relationship so I’m going to let the air clean the wound on my way home.’ What I actually said was ‘yup, just a scratch.’

 

We arrived home and I traipsed as little blood as I could through the house to find the first aid equipment (which basically was a couple of bandaids, tweezers, Betadine and cotton balls), and went back outside to start cleaning off all the blood and bits so I could see the damage I’d done. Turns out when you fall on gravel, you don’t just get a graze that will scab over in a couple of days. The gravel pushes your skin away from the other skin, down your leg and looks similar to if you pushed along a block of cheese with your finger…and added tomato sauce. Basically there was a nice divot now in my right leg just under my knee.

 

I should have gone to the Doc’s and had the thing properly cleaned and stitched, but It was Christmas day, would have cost the food budget for two weeks and honestly I didn’t think it looked that bad. I thought it was just a deep graze. I had no idea at the time that the wound was open, and there was no skin protecting me from everything a person’s skin protects you from.

 

Mum and I cleaned my wound every day and took it in turns with deciding if the site needed to be covered or not. Her reasoning was that it needed the air to dry it out so it can scab and heal, mine was that it needed to be covered so no bugs could get in. Either way I should have gone to the Doc’s straight away, the thing was still bleeding a day after and still weeping 3 days after that.

 

Five days after what I am guilting my brother with the title ‘The Sibling Relationship Terminating Incident’ I saw a rash develop around the wound. We just thought it was and allergic reaction from the bandages I was using but couldn’t figure out why it only surrounded 2/3rds of the wound and was red raw and blistering.

 

The sixth day was when I finally dragged myself to the Doc’s just to make sure it was healing properly.

 

I was getting all excited for New Years and had finished making my weekend plans when a man with a degree and a grin way too big on his face, glanced at my leg no longer than you would the clock (although sometimes I stare at the clock a little too long and can’t figure out the time at all, it’s like when you say a word over and over and it loses all meaning?) and told me it was infected.  I had a secondary infection, needed to go home and sit with my leg higher than my butt and take antibiotics that may or may not be the right strain to fight the infection until my next appointment in which they would either give me new antibiotics, give me the all clear, or possibly put me in hospital also on a guess rotation of antibiotics.

 

I was pissed. So pissed that I cried my way home because that’s what I’ve found out I do when I’m really angry. I cry, so watch out world, if I start to cry at you, run. I might drown you in my tears of anger. I had to cancel my whole weekends plans, and I waxed and chose outfits. That stuff just doesn’t magically happen itself.

 

So I’m into the third day of taking antibiotics. I’m at home, Mum refused for some reason to give me a bell, I’m only allowed to get up to bathe and go to the toilet, ‘boredom’ is no longer enough of a word to adequately describe why I’ve looked up the things I have on YouTube, and like clockwork 4 times a day Mum comes in with a tablet and watches while I take it like I’m in a mental institution and am going to hide it under my tongue then stash it for my own crafty plans to escape later when she leaves. Yes I’ve also watched a lot of TV.

 

There are pro’s and con’s to being bedbound though. The biggest con is that as soon as I was told I needed to sit and be still, all I wanted was to do something active and eat. The biggest pro is that my brother will get me just about anything I ask him for and I might miss work this week (although that’s linked to a con because If they get a Temp in I will just have to clean up after her when I finally go back in, no offence to Temps but it’s my work world. I know where everything is.)

 

I guess my moral to this story is 'brothers will always injure you even when you are adults' and 'go to the Doctors, the food budget is useless if you contract Septicaemia and are dead'.

 

These are my true stories. I may have added the Doberman.

Reviews

[reminder]

I love the voice you writing has- descriptive, sarcastic, self-deprecating...super entertaining! You would make a good television comedy writer:) Keep up the good work! (Oh, yeah... sorry about your wipeout!)