A Tale of Two Gurneys
So for this Father's Day, I will regale you with a story that has become family lore.
One day when I was around 11 or 12, my leg around the area of my inner thigh/hip socket began to hurt immensely. It was also difficult to move my leg. As the day progressed, it got worse, and my father decided to take me to the hospital to get it checked out.
I don't remember a whole lot of detail about the beginning of the office visit. It may have even been the emergency room, I'm not sure. All I remember is the doctor saying that he wanted to scrape some bone sampling off of my thigh bone or something of the such. It was probably some first year resident trying to be fancy. But the procedure involved a needle of the length normally seen in horror movies, no anesthesia, and a nurse swabbing my inner thigh with Lidocaine. Without warning, she suddenly plunged the needle into my thigh, then began assiduously scraping the bone.
As one would expect, I began to scream what could literally be termed bloody murder. I normally am fairly stoic about pain, but this was a bit much for my 11 year old self.
One minute my Dad is standing beside the gurney, anxiously holding my hand, the next thing I know, one of the two nurses who was pinning my legs down screeched, "Grab him!" I then saw my father slumping onto the side of the gurney and falling to the floor.
He had, for the first and so far only time in his life, fainted.
Apparently from the effects of my screaming.
Now, there was no one paying the even the slightest bit of attention to me, and a bunch of people trying to lift my dad off the floor and swabbing the blood off of the back of his head, as he had fallen straight back after hitting the gurney with his upper body.
I don't remember how long I was left alone, but it seemed quite a bit of time to me. Suddenly, the curtain moved, and they wheeled my father into the room in a gurney of his own, as he had required stitches in the back of his head from the fall. He was in quite a bit of pain himself by this point, and in no condition to drive. The nurses asked me for our phone number, and set about calling my mom to pick us both up. I remember having to walk out of the hospital, watching my mom push my Dad's wheelchair they had kindly provided him with out to the car.
In the end, my Dad came out of that visit much worse than I did, as my leg was actually a bit forgotten in all the drama and felt better the next day. Not so my poor father's skull, which remained sore for quite a while and required a follow-up visit to remove the stitches.
Here's to a Dad who knows how to take one for the team!
Happy Father's Day!
One day when I was around 11 or 12, my leg around the area of my inner thigh/hip socket began to hurt immensely. It was also difficult to move my leg. As the day progressed, it got worse, and my father decided to take me to the hospital to get it checked out.
I don't remember a whole lot of detail about the beginning of the office visit. It may have even been the emergency room, I'm not sure. All I remember is the doctor saying that he wanted to scrape some bone sampling off of my thigh bone or something of the such. It was probably some first year resident trying to be fancy. But the procedure involved a needle of the length normally seen in horror movies, no anesthesia, and a nurse swabbing my inner thigh with Lidocaine. Without warning, she suddenly plunged the needle into my thigh, then began assiduously scraping the bone.
As one would expect, I began to scream what could literally be termed bloody murder. I normally am fairly stoic about pain, but this was a bit much for my 11 year old self.
One minute my Dad is standing beside the gurney, anxiously holding my hand, the next thing I know, one of the two nurses who was pinning my legs down screeched, "Grab him!" I then saw my father slumping onto the side of the gurney and falling to the floor.
He had, for the first and so far only time in his life, fainted.
Apparently from the effects of my screaming.
Now, there was no one paying the even the slightest bit of attention to me, and a bunch of people trying to lift my dad off the floor and swabbing the blood off of the back of his head, as he had fallen straight back after hitting the gurney with his upper body.
I don't remember how long I was left alone, but it seemed quite a bit of time to me. Suddenly, the curtain moved, and they wheeled my father into the room in a gurney of his own, as he had required stitches in the back of his head from the fall. He was in quite a bit of pain himself by this point, and in no condition to drive. The nurses asked me for our phone number, and set about calling my mom to pick us both up. I remember having to walk out of the hospital, watching my mom push my Dad's wheelchair they had kindly provided him with out to the car.
In the end, my Dad came out of that visit much worse than I did, as my leg was actually a bit forgotten in all the drama and felt better the next day. Not so my poor father's skull, which remained sore for quite a while and required a follow-up visit to remove the stitches.
Here's to a Dad who knows how to take one for the team!
Happy Father's Day!
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