I’ve always been the clumsy one. I blame the fact that I was tagged with the title of being “pigeon – toed” as a child , and it settled itself into my psyche and often reappears in the form of two left feet.

I fell off the roof of our house when I was 4 after wondering where the ladder that was leaned against it went to. That required several stitches and lots of neosporin as I took a header into a pretty large bush.

At 8 I ran my bicycle into a garbage truck. That was parked.

When I was 13 I ran into , and through a sliding glass patio door. A blood transfusion, 184 stitches in my legs, face and head and a few plastic surgeries and I was fine.

On a school trip a year later, I’m the one that fell off of the camel we posed for pictures on at the Great Wall of China.

When first learning to “drop off at the dock” while water-skiing …… I hit the dock and broke the skis.

During a police training session , I had to take my partner to the ground and handcuff him. I did, right on top of my hand. I broke my middle finger.

On one of G and I’s first “overnight” trips together, I ran into the hotel desk in the dark and broke my toe.

One Mardi Gras I was “over-served”  *cough*  and was attacked by a swinging bathroom door and the subsequent tile floor that rushed up to meet my head. This required stitches and resulted in a nasty black eye. Two days before I was to speak at a Battered Women’s Shelter.

There are many other “accidents” I can think of, and some I’m sure I can’t, but bottom line is, I’m an accident waiting to happen.

And now, this …….

Last night I went outside with the dogs and when coming back in, I slipped as I starting coming back up my entryway steps and face-planted myself right into one of my brick columns. Totally sober, totally clumsy. I knew it was bad because I could feel blood just pouring down my face and so I called the FD and asked them to send the rescue truck over to take a look. Their immediate diagnosis was for me to go to the emergency room, so I drove myself to the ER because I sure didn’t feel like spending almost $1000 for an ambulance to take me 1.5 miles, one way.  Upon arrival, blood still everywhere and showing no signs of stopping, the nice nurse at the intake station (evil bitch from hell) looked at me , handed me a wad of kleenex and told me to have a seat, it would be awhile. Now I’m usually a pretty nice person, but when it involves smacking ones face and head against a hard object I’d say I have a very good reason to have cause for concern. There were three other people in the waiting room, none bleeding and dripping all over the nice shiny floor. After a few minutes of sitting there I walked up and asked the nurse if I could see someone because I was feeling a bit dizzy and was still losing blood. I was also under the impression that at most hospitals, trauma takes precedence over other ailments unless of course it’s a heart attack, stroke, etc. Two of the three people in the waiting room went outside to smoke while I was there, so to me, their needs didn’t seem all that pressing. She sighed loudly, snapped on a glove and tok a look at my face. She then told me that the best thing for me to do was to go home, wash my face with peroxide and take an anti-inflammatory. WTF ?

Ok, I bit. Why ? In her humble medical opinion, that would be better than me sitting there bleeding all over the waiting room floor while waiting for a doctor to tell me the same thing. And, by the time I actually saw a doctor I would have probably stopped bleeding anyway and there wouldn’t be a lot they could do. Mmmkay.

So I left. Not happy with Shelby Baptist Medical Center. Dr. Twitter and I had  a nice long discussion about it, I seemed ok, so I finally went to sleep for a few hours.

This morning I took myself to my doctor’s office, where they saw me in about 5 seconds. CT scan and x-rays of my head were done, and he poked around in the cut , cleaning it all out and deciding that because of the location, it would be better to let it heal without stitches as it’s an avulsion, and do a follow-up with a plastic surgeon later if needed. A lovely tetanus shot, some antibiotics and a prescription for pain pills later and I was on my way home.

Now I gotta make up a good story about what happened so I don’t sound like some lame -ass klutzy foot. Or get called pigeon – toed.

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