Sunday, Bloody Sunday! (Getting Old Ain't Easy)

 

by Pa Rock

Emergency Room Frequent Flyer

I'm a morning person.  I can't help it, it's a curse.  When the sun comes up I am already out and about getting my day underway, and as the sun is setting I am thinking about bed.  That's the way I roll.

My routine is to take a morning walk, usually 5,000 steps or more while Rosie takes her morning constitutional.  Then I come back in the house and take my daily meds before I shower,  a nice variety of multi-colored pills and capsules (two of which are blood-thinners), as well as an insulin shot.   After that is my shower, followed by breakfast.

As I was drying off following my shower this morning, I suddenly realized that my feet, which were firmly placed on a bathroom throw rug, felt sticky.  Looking down I was not especially surprised to see both of my feet covered in blood and a large pool of blood collected between my feet on the rug.  It was going to be one of those days!

I had done this dance once before, back in June, and at that time had managed to track blood into literally every room in the house as I rushed around trying to get ready to drive myself to the Emergency Room.  Today I somehow got myself dressed, collected my wallet and keys from the bedroom, and exited the house barefoot (while carrying a pair of fresh socks and sandals), and made it to the car while only tracking blood through about half of the house.  I also took along my bloody bath towel and put it on the floorboard of the car to keep the blood splatter on the car's carpeting down to a minimum.

I self-diagnosed the problem because I had encountered almost the same situation last June.  At  that time I had picked a scab from my ankle, not realizing that it was attached to a varicose vein, and triggered rapid bleeding not unlike an Oklahoma oil gusher, though on a much smaller scale.  Today I hadn't intentionally picked a scab, but the towel had probably rubbed one loose, and blood was literally spraying from one foot to the other - and all points in-between.

I knew that I could make it to the Emergency Room under my own steam because I had done it before, but this time when I got there, instead of walking in and bleeding all over the floor, I stood in the entryway and signaled for them to come get me - but I still managed to paint a path through much of the patient area, nonetheless.

The doctor stitched me up with a thread that dissolves on its own, an improvement over my visit in June when another doctor used a thread that had to be physically removed - at an "Urgent Care" while I was on vacation in Oregon.  It's good to know about the dissolvable option.

As the nurse worked at cleaning my feet before dismissing me from the ER, she told me that she had a patient with the same issue a few months earlier and that his treatment had been complicated because he was fixing to leave on an extended vacation.

"Yes, I remember it well," I replied.

Getting old ain't easy!