October 15th 6:33pm - Glass Disaster Part 2

I arrived at the hospital in record time, accompanied by my dad and boyfriend. I hobbled into the emergency room, more concerned with food yearnings than with the pain factor. I sat listening to the echoing chorus of my empty stomach while my dad explained the incident to the hospital admittance person and my boyfriend held my hand. The hospital powers that be entrusted me to a doctor, and four minutes later (again: record timing) my toe was stitched and I was on my way to get food and then to my friend’s basketball game.
My doctor removed the sutures two weeks later and I returned to my soccer team amid much teasing concerning the origination of my damaged toe: food.
Though I assumed the adventure had concluded, it was not done yet. Over the next two months my toe was under high stress – it hurt constantly. After every soccer practice I removed my cleat to find my sock blood-soaked. Pressing on the tiny scar on my second toe was not consistent with feeling the corresponding toe on my opposite foot. I graced my doctor’s office with my presence three times. Each time he assured me my toe was misbehaving because I wasn’t treating it well as I was still playing soccer on it. I accepted his explanation. After the third time my mom did not. Ignoring my many protests, my mom hauled me away to the hospital again. This time it was a different hospital.
A nurse immediately coerced me into a wheelchair. My mom explained the situation in detail while I endeavored to make the wheelchair balance on one wheel. This lasted until another nurse seized the wheelchair’s back and wheeled me away to get an x-ray. The nurse enlightened me and my mom by notifying us that glass very rarely appears on an x-ray. The hospital took an x-ray anyway. When they embraced the x-ray to the light, we saw a shard of glass encroaching across my toe. The doctor exclaimed how unusual it was to see glass and summoned five other doctors to observe. By the time he made a minute cut in my toe, twelve doctors and nurses crowded around the hospital bed straining to see. He extracted an inch-long piece of glass out of my toe. The audience sighed and clapped. The first ER doctor had stitched an inch of glass in my toe. It had resided there for two months.
Lessons Learned:
1. Playing soccer on a toe that had stitches taken out should not hurt.
2. Walking after sutures were confiscated should not hurt.
3. If your foot continues to bleed two months after you had stitches removed, something is wrong.
4. You are powerless in a wheelchair. If someone decides you are going to go somewhere, you go. Popping wheelies doesn’t help.
5. Glass does appear on x-rays!