lesson of the day...

DO NOT slide around on 80 year old hard wood floors in your socks.

For those of you with weak stomachs, there are some semi-graphic pictures at the bottom of this blog, you may not want to look.

So, on Friday night I was running from the living room to the kitchen and decided to slide along the floor in my slippery socks. NOT A GOOD IDEA! All of a sudden BAM excruciating pain. I fell onto the floor yelling and Justin came running. I had a cut on the bottom of my foot, but not a very big one and it wasn't really bleeding. Justin looked at it in the bathroom and couldn't see anything in it, although there was a big rip in my sock and a piece of wood lodged in there. We decided that must have been what cut me and finished watching our movie.

On Saturday morning I woke up in terrible pain. My foot was slightly swollen and hurt really freaking bad and I couldn't put any weight on it. So, we decided to go to the ER to see if there was anything left in my foot. We saw the doctor and she explained that taking an x-ray would be pointless because wood doesn't show up on an x-ray, so they wanted to take a CT scan. Great, I go sliding on the floor and have to have a flippin CT scan. They came back with the results and said there was a 1.7 cm piece of wood stuck in my foot about 2 cm deep. I was actually really excited about that, because it meant there was a reason for all the pain. They said they would cut me open to see if they could find it and if they couldn't they'd have to call an orthopedic surgeon! So they started to numb my foot. There's a nerve right next to the bone that sticks out of your ankle, so they injected some litocane to numb the nerve and my whole foot-4 TIMES! I don't have the largest reaction to local anesthetic. So it took and unreasonable amount of time and lito to get it to numb up. It finally did and they cut me open. I had 2 doctors working on me a resident and an attending. The resident started the procedure but couldn't see anything because he accidently hit a vein when he cut me open and there was too much blood. So they injected me with epinephrine which stops the bleeding and as he was doing that he said he felt the splinter. Well then the attending took over and she started digging around a little. All of a sudden she said, I SEE IT! So she held the cut open with the resident pulled out the splinter very gently. When they pulled it out they started kind of freaking out. I couldn't see anything because I was on my stomach so they could get to the bottom of my foot easier. They showed me what they pulled out and it was 2 INCHES LONG! They were so excited that they were able to pull it out with out surgical intervention. The attending went to go show everyone their handy work. They stiched me up and sent me on my way. So now I'm laid up and on crutches. Justin's been wonderful, bringing me things and giving me my medicine when I need it. Here is a picture of the splinter in proportion to a dime and the bottom of my foot. Enjoy! :)