Me in the Emergency Room After Getting Seven Stitches
I know you're now wondering what the heck the well story is all about so I will just tell you. In a nutshell I found a well in my back yard, like a real honest to goodness water well, with all the bricking on the inside, ten feet deep. We've owned the house for 17 years and I never knew it was there. So some of my friends joked that I had opened a portal into the under world and shortly after that I had about three bad things happen to me.
One of the crazy things that happened to me was that I cut my ankle open with a bottle of Topo Chico water. I posted this on on Facebook and I had some friends who reached out via private message to ask me for more details in order to understand what had happened. I had other friends who just read it and imagined their own scenario in their head and thought it happened completely differently. So here is the real story. This is a long story so sit back, get another drink, or go use the restroom now.
It was a freak accident and in hindsight I should have made a completely different decision and maybe I wouldn't have this huge scar on my ankle and nerve damage now.
On the eve of Mother's Day I went grocery shopping at Walmart on a Saturday, when I usually go on Sundays. Maybe that was my first mistake. I wanted a 12 pack of Topo Chico like the ones I always see set up in the main middle aisle of the grocery side but I didn't see any. (Ironically because I wanted to cut down on drinking so I drink Topo Chico with lime and salt like a margarita.) Instead of leaving well enough alone I asked one of the employees. He told me he had some in the back and he brought me one. I put it in my cart, took it out again to have the cashier scan it when I paid for my groceries and took it to my car. As I was putting all my groceries up I saved the 12 pack for last because it's heavy. I had a bunch of blankets in my back trunk area so I had to put most of my groceries in my back seat. When I set the 12 pack of Topo Chicos down on the floor of my back seat I heard a crack. I had set the pack of bottles down too hard and I broke a bottle inside. Bottle #1.
Second mistake. I should have just taken that damn 12 pack back inside and asked for an exchange but I didn't feel like hassling, plus I had frozen stuff in my car. Ha! Hindsight is 20/20 and this is a perfect example of that. No, instead I decide to open the box to see which bottle was broken. It was the bottle in the very middle. Once again, another reason I should have just taken the box back inside. I get the brilliant idea of taking each out bottle and wiping off the shards of glass and water and putting each one down on the floorboard of the front passenger side. I even sat down on the passenger side seat, legs out the door, taking out each bottle, wiping it and setting them down on the floorboard.
I was on the 10th bottle when it slipped out of my hand and crashed to the cement, right between my legs. Bottle #2 that I broke. Imagine a full bottle of carbonated water crashing down and the explosion of that bottle because of the pressure inside. Also imagine my legs very close to the bottle because I was sitting inside the car with my legs out. So I didn't drop it from very far when it hit the ground and it hit right between my feet. When it hit, it somehow bounced or something (it happened so fast I don't know how it happened) and the bottle cut me on the inside of my right ankle. It made a nice curved shape of a bottle cut. Blood gushed out like a little fountain, not a little trickle of blood, and I knew that it was a deep cut.
I almost panicked, but I didn't. I got my stuff together, tried wrapping my makeup rag around my ankle and I started limping towards the store for help. I think I called my best friend and then my ex husband before I did that. Best friend didn't answer and ex husband said he'd be there as fast as he could. I won't tell you all about the couple who drove up and didn't even try to help me because it will just make me mad all over again. I will tell you about the awesome angel named Angela, a Walmart employee, who came to my rescue. She saw me in the parking lot, helped me inside, cleaned my cut, stopped the bleeding or at least slowed it down, and then bandaged me up so Rey could take me to the emergency room.
Two emergency rooms later I left around 10 p.m. with seven stitches and a $1,000 co-pay. Awesomeness. So you see, even if some things had defrosted while I returned the 12 pack of Topo Chico it would have still been way cheaper and less painful.
Side note: Walmart and Topo Chico were great about reaching out afterwards. I told them both that it was a freak accident and nobody's fault and I had to assure them that I wasn't going to sue anybody. I broke both bottles. One inside the box and the other one outside the box and that's the one that cut me. (I feel the need to clarify this part because apparently it's confused some people)
Eight weeks later. I'm wearing high heels again for short periods of time and I started walking for exercise again. Bad news is that the cut was so deep that I have nerve damage in the area under the cut. So my foot is still swelling there and it hurts when I've been on my feet too long or walked too long.
I often think about those running memes that I see about being grateful that you can still run when others can't. I appreciate those memes now. I have to start over completely from the bottom again and I have to build up to the small walk/jog routine I had going. I'm going to start blogging about running after an injury and I hope that there are people out there who can relate and maybe share their experiences. So new goals! I will build up to running again one day soon. In the meanwhile I will #walkTOrun!
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