things you don't want to hear in an ER...

The steps going down to my humble apartment are what one may expect, slippery when wet. Yet they sure caught me off guard Tuesday night as I made my way down the uneven pathway to my little home. Down being the operative word. As my slick soled FloJo (flip flop to those of you who don't know)made contact with equally slippery surface of the redwood portion of my stair and I found myself on the ground before I even realized I was falling. Actually, very little of me came in contact with the surface, mostly just my the top right section of my right foot. Being my mothers daughter I am quite accustom to falling, so even though it hurt (a lot) since I really, really needed to pee, I picked myself up and made it the rest of the way to my restroom. A minute later, my friend Brandon arrived, and let himself in, and by that time my foot had not only turned lovely shades of black and blue it had also become quite puffy. It was clear that our pasta dinner plans had just been tossed out the window,as I phoned my Dad to take me down to emergency.

Being the amazing Dad that he his, he kindly rushed over and helped me hobble back up my many steps, dirt stick covered path to his waiting car. We tried with no avail to make it to the local Urgent Care before the 9pm closing and then made our way down to the E.R. Where we were to sit for the next 3 hours.

The first hour or so, the waiting room was actually quite full, and the TV was tuned to AMC and Death Wish II. Not really the kind of movie I suspect most people who are waiting in for a doctor are in the mood to watch. Filled with scenes of blood, and dying, rape and people creating false identities to work in hospitals. As comforting as that was, I was pretty jazzed when we were the only ones left on our side of the room and got to change to the Food Network just in time to watch Anthony Bourdain eat the still beating heart of a cobra. Now I realize that while this still might not be something most people in a hospital waiting room would find comforting it is like being at home for me. And it provided just enough of a distraction to take my mind off of the pain shooting though my foot. Apparently two other people who walked in agreed and made their way over to our corner of the world to join us in the stomach wrenching fun.

It was right between the switch in Television programing that a nurse came out of the back to get a guy (who had apparently brought someone else in)saying to him, "I think she wants to say goodbye." Are you kidding me? This is not something you want to hear a nurse say. Perhaps a better choice of words would have been, "She is okay enough to stay without you so she wants to talk to you before you take off for the night." I don't know anything but, "I think she wants to say goodbye."

Of course there are other things you might not want to hear in the E.R., I know I was not pleased to hear that I had broken my foot, and that meant 6-8 weeks on crutches.

Yep, so not what I wanted to hear, but better than..."I think she wants to say goodbye."