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Almost Dying: Blood and Fainting Edition

I blame it on Christmas.

Last week our garage flooded, soaking our Christmas tree box. Wanting to avoid musty Christmas tree, I spread the branches (which attach to the tree with metal hooks) all over the basement to air out.

So, yesterday I was on the phone with my mom and went downstairs to wash a load of laundry (which is still sitting, dry, in my washing machine, now that I think of it). I was barefoot.

And I heard this little squichy sound (I think. Or I imagined it later. Not sure.) and my foot felt funny. And it was dripping blood. christmastree

Apparently, I had emphatically stepped on one of those metal, very blunt Christmas tree prongs.

I said to my mom, calmly, “Oh. I just did something really gross.”

I clapped my thumb over the spot and tried to figure out if I was going to bleed out on the floor or be absolutely fine.

The verdict was leaning towards absolutely fine, since blood didn’t keep gushing everywhere. My mom was giving me all of the first aid instructions: “Wash it out with cold water in the tub, disinfect it, bandage it (Do you have gauze? You really should have gauze.), TETANUS SHOT.”

And I was holding my thumb on my hole-punched foot, thinking about the very blunt metal rod. And that I NEVER wanted to remove my thumb from my wound, because then I’d have to see it.

All of that thinking… I started to feel light-headed. I explained this to my mom as I sat down on the basement floor. Everything tried to go kind of grey and all the blood rushed to one of my ears (just one).

My mom told me to keep talking to her, which was really difficult while my body was trying to pass out. But I hadn’t had a shower yet, so if I didn’t keep talking, she’d probably call 911 and then paramedics would see me all dirty. Awkward. So I kept talking, sort of.

After a minute or two, the universe kind of righted. Then I started getting really annoyed, because I’m not melodramatic and I’m not wimpy and it was just a little wound that wasn’t even bleeding anymore. There was no excuse for fainting. Just as long as I didn’t think about the hole in my foot…

I dragged myself upstairs and gathered first aid stuff and washed out the injury. Turned out, it didn’t look that bad at all. If I hadn’t been on the phone with my mom, I probably wouldn’t even have gone to a doctor, but she kept saying, “TETANUS SHOT!” so I kind of had to.

My mom was also very concerned about the almost-blacking-out thing, but really? Metal rod puncturing my foot! Hang on… feeling a little light-headed now.

So I took a shower and went to the doctor. And the doctor didn’t care two bits that I’d almost passed out. She kind of looked at me like, “Yeah, so?” Apparently it was a perfectly natural response to my experience.

She said the puncture didn’t look that deep and she washed it out with hydrogen peroxide, put antibacterial cream on, and bandaged it. I could have done that at home. HOWEVER, I could not give myself a tetanus shot, so I guess it’s fair.

I don’t think my mom was very impressed with the doctor’s lack of concern about my almost-faint. But my mom lives in Wisconsin and I live in Kentucky, so what can she do? Call the doctor herself?

Wait. Don’t give her any ideas.

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