NaBloPoMo: Day 23- It's An Emergency!

I'm doing National Blog Posting Month with a twist. Every day I'll write 5 things about a specific topic.

NaBloPoMo Day Twenty-three~ Medical Emergency

I have made numerous trips to the ER in my life. When my Dad came home from work and there were bloody towels in the sink, he always knew which of his 4 children had been hurt. My parents told me the ER always kept a bed empty just in case I needed to go in for treatment.

1. DOG vs Arm~ When I was about 4, I was sitting on our front porch minding my own business. A very huge German Shepard came up the sidewalk and chomped on my right arm. Off to the ER to get it checked out and get a tetanus shot. The dog was put in quarantine, but the next day the owners let it out, it bit another child and the owners were required to have it put to sleep.

2. Leg vs Barbed Wire Fence~ I was about 6 and wanted to get to the other side. My right leg made it over, my left leg didn't. It was cut from my ankle to the back of my knee, shredded the skin on the side of my knee and then cut up to my hip. It couldn't be stitched, so they just wrapped it and gave me another tetanus shot. I still have the scars.

3. Fish Hook vs Foot~ How on earth did a fish hook with a white lure get in our backyard in the middle of winter? As I walked through the snowy back yard, my toe caught the lure, flipped it up and it embedded itself onto the top of my foot. Back to the ER for, you guessed it, a TETANUS SHOT!

4. Car vs Car~ About 3 months after we got married, I was on my way to work. I had the green light at the intersection, but the 80 year old woman in the giant Cadillac coming from the right never stopped at the red light. She took the front end off my little Chevy Vega and pushed me across 3 lanes of oncoming traffic.I came out of my seat, slammed my head up above my seat, jammed my shoulders into my neck, jammed my knees under the steering wheel. I herniated a disc in my neck, permanently damaged my trapezius muscle and tricep on the right side, but the good news was that I didn't need a Tetanus Shot!

5. Allergy Alert~ After that car accident I started taking large amounts of aspirin. One day I took 2 aspirin and within about 15 minutes I looked like a boiled lobster. My face, neck, chest and arms were flaming red with hundreds of tiny little blisters. As I walked down the hall of the clinic, people were giving me a wide berth, in case I had something contagious. Turns out I'm allergic to aspirin. All my medical charts have it written in BIG RED LETTERS. It's only been a hassle when I have to take a new med and need to know for sure that there are no salicylates in the mix.