Great Ways to Find Out Who Really Loves You

A few days after my last real post, I was working furiously toward an October 31st deadline and was working so hard that I had to contort my body in order to see my computer screen through the avalanche of books and papers that had mounted seemingly out of nowhere. In order to help accomplish my work, I thought it was a wise idea to have a massive accident in my own home, give myself a black eye that would shock Lennox Lewis, and split the skin around my left eye to the bone.

I had been awake for two days straight, working at my kitchen island where the chair is the most comfortable, and finally decided that, since I was probably unable to comprehend A Cat in the Hat at the time, I needed at least a couple hours of sleep. I swiveled in my chair so that I could head to bed when my feet got tangled in the footrests and I went over face first into the corner of the marble topping the kitchen island. That's the last thing I remember for 2 hours, which is probably good because I may have gotten up, looked in the mirror, and believed myself to be a feature character in a Wes Craven movie. Actually, I did that anyway.

Two hours later, I awoke in my bed, wondering how I had gotten there, feeling very disoriented, and looked around to see myself pooled in blood. My hair was entirely matted with blood, and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out the source. I started to get out of bed and realized that I had the balance of a Weeble Wobble, only one that would fall down, and stumbled to the bathroom to see three distinct slashes on the ocular bone both over and under my left eye. The entire left side of my face was already black. I was too disoriented to be horrified yet, so I began to try and reconstruct what had happened. My first thought was that someone had broken in and slashed me, but as I weaved my way out to the kitchen and saw a pool of blood right around where I had fallen, I realized I had brilliantly done this to myself. From the size of the blood pool, I figured I was on the floor, knocked out, for about 20 minutes or so. I felt like I was a detective on Law and Order as I examined the blood drops and smears leading to my bed.

I figured that I had way too much work to do to go to Plastic Surgeon's office, which is about 35 miles away, so in my head-injured wisdom thought, "Hey, I work in a hospital, I can fix this." I promptly washed the wounds and then attempted to put a Band-Aid on these actively bleeding wounds. In retrospect, I can't help but giggle at the memory of my thinking that this was going to help in any way. When that didn't work, I tried to superglue the slashes shut (which, by the way, sounds weird, but actually works in emergency situations, but only with more superficial cuts) and that recollection makes me laugh even harder. Here I was, totally disoriented, with a head injury to my left frontal lobe, wondering why, if superglue can keep that dude in the hardhat hanging from a beam in the ads, why can't it keep a few cuts closed?

It took me 2 days to finally call Plastic Surgeon and tell her what had happened. I drove to her office, but my balance was still off and the nature of the injury was such that the swelling had displaced my eyeball and I was seeing double. I drove like any drunk driver with one hand over my left eye. When I walked into her office, she took one look at me and was visibly horrified. She said, "Honey, what have you done? You've always been my Picasso, the one that I want my other patients to look like. Now you actually look like a Picasso!" During the 2 hours in which she stitched and cut necrotic tissue away, she asked why I hadn't called her immediately. When I explained that I just had too much work to do and was afraid that sacrificing the 4 hours I knew it would take was not an option at that time, she stopped for a second, put her hand on my shoulder, looked me directly in the (one good) eye, and said, "Baby, you're one of my best friends. I would have come to your house and done it there, even if it was 3 in the morning." Forty-eight stitches later and after assurances from PS that scar therapy would make the injuries invisible after a few months, I left.

This whole injury and PS's comment about coming to my house spurred my thoughts on other injuries I've had and the people that have either come to my rescue or have turned a blind eye. In 2000, I woke up one morning with what I thought were the worst menstrual cramps of all time, a fever, and vomiting. Thinking that it was just a bad flu combined with the monthly loveliness that is being a woman, I went back to bed. By 6 PM, I knew I had appendicitis. I drove myself to the hospital and called Lauren (who has a blog of her own now), saying, "I need your help. I have appendicitis and my parents are already heading to the airport to come out here. Please go to my apartment, clean out ALL of the cigarettes and hide my birth control pills."

She groaned. "Almost, I went out with some people after work and I've already had 5 margaritas, but f*ck it. I'll do it."

I warned her to be careful and she did exactly what I had asked and then met me at the hospital. She stayed with me until my parents arrived and visited for the next two days in the hospital, bringing flowers, ice cream, and gifts. On top of that, she drove my car back to my apartment since my parents would be taking me back there. I still haven't paid her back for that parking charge and she never asked for it.

Now that's someone who loves you.

In 2005, I began having lower back pain on my right hand side one day. It was uncomfortable, but nothing I couldn't handle. As the days progressed, however, it worsened to the point that I thought I'd rather have a Scientology e-meter up my ass than be going through this. I went to Ex and said, "I don't know what this is, but it's not going away. Do you think I should go to the hospital?"

He looked up from his computer and sighed. "Whatever. I don't know." He looked back down at his computer.

I called Lauren two hours later and described the pain. She said, "Get your ass to the hospital right now. You have either a kidney infection or kidney stones."

I went back to Ex and said, "I need to go to the hospital. Do you think you can drive me?"

As I was bent double, he looked up and sighed once again, but this time he added an eye roll. "Fine," he grunted.

"No, actually, I can do it myself, don't worry about it."

Begrudgingly he said, "I'll do it. Whatever."

When we arrived at the hospital, they immediately put me into an ER exam room while they scheduled a CT scan. Ex was with me, but I could see that he was clearly uncomfortable. I said, "Look, you don't look very happy here, so why don't you just wait in the car?" Of course, I was thinking that there was no way he would actually leave me alone and frightened in the emergency room, but I was wrong. He was gone before I could even say, "See you outside."

Three hours, three Vicodin, and a CT scan later, it was confirmed. I had kidney stones and just had to wait until they passed. I hobbled out to the parking lot, found Ex's car, and got in.

"So, what is it, an attack of the Hormone Monster?" he laughed.

"No, it's three kidney stones." That shut him up immediately.

When you're seriously injured or think you might have something of gravity with which to deal in your body, you quickly figure out who actually loves you. PS would have driven to my house at 3 in the morning. My parents immediately flew to my city when I had appendicitis, even before I was diagnosed. Lauren went above and beyond in caring for me when I was hospitalized, keeping my dirty little secrets away from my parents and doing everything she could to make me feel better despite the fact that she was 5 margaritas into the night. And Ex? I suppose his behavior speaks for itself.

But the one good thing about my latest injury? Because of the manner in which I excoriated the obicularis muscle around my eye, I will never have crow's feet there. That means only half the Botox!

P.S. There's been about as much action in my divorce process as there was in our bedroom for the last year and a half of my marriage, but I did meet with Ex briefly to discuss a resolution. I'm saving that for next time.