Ouch

I’ve posted about my carjacking, and I’ve posted about my back breaking bus ride, two of my favorite posts. And this week I referenced two other injuries/dramas, and I think it’s only right that I give them their proper attention.

The first one being the wire in the cheek incident, and this has nothing to do with sitting on some ancient mattress. This was back in 1991, and for some reason I remember I was watching a Cincinatti Reds game on ESPN, I think they were playing the Dodgers, but I’m not for sure about that. Anyway, I was rockin’ the metal mouth look back then. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the “grillz” look had yet to surface, so there was nothing cool about a mouth full of metal. I remember one bracket; I think that’s what they are called. You know, the individual pieces on each tooth? Well, one had fallen off. So there was just this one tooth that was free from braces hell, and running a few millimeters over it was the wire that connects all the brackets or whatever they’re called (for now, we’re sticking with brackets). Anyway, for some reason I was compelled to play with the stretch of wire that was free of a bracket. In doing so, I was able to pop t he wire away from my tooth, then pop it back into place. It didn’t seem to do anything, since the wire stayed in the brackets around this area. Just one of those stupid things, like picking at a scab, that boys do.

Well this fateful summer day, my parents were off and running errands. I remember it was a Saturday, and this comes into play in a minute. Anyway, I’m watching the game and popping the wire. Then suddenly it pops, and it pops in a bad way. It frees itself from the other brackets going to the back of my mouth, and the wire sticks into the inside of my cheek. It nearly poked through; in fact I have a small scar on the outside of my cheek. We’re talking instant intense pain.

So what do I do? Not much, sadly. What could I have done? Well, my close friend across the street had a dentist for a dad. Did I go over there? Of course I didn’t. Instead, I waited till my parents got home, at which time I held up a piece of paper that said, “take me to the hospital,” and then pointed at my cheek. Being that it was now Saturday evening, my orthodontist wasn’t at work.

We ended up calling him some how, and meeting him at his office, where he removed the metal from my cheek. End of story, right? No, not so fast. Turns out when mom tells you the mouth is full of germs, she isn’t kidding. That little wound ended up getting infected, and my face became a little swollen. They put me on some drugs, and that should be the end of it right? No, not so fast.

Few days later, mom is on her way to visit her family back in Cleveland. She comes up to my room to say good-bye, but doesn’t see the other side of my face which was still on the pillow. When I finally woke up, I saw the left side of my face was huge. So I soon find myself in the hospital with a nasty little infection, so nasty in fact that they plan to keep me a few days. That’s just how I wanted to spend my summer vacation, only not.

But the story isn’t over, it’s about to take a turn for the depressing. My mom lands in Cleveland and her brother isn’t t here to meet her as planned. She waits and waits, and finally I believe it was her Aunt and Uncle that meet her. Something had happened to my grandmother, and she passed away. Luckily, I had seen her a few months earlier at my Bar Mitzvah. And to top things off, I missed the funeral, because I was unable to travel because of the infection, as did my pops, who stayed with me. I should have sued.

My other entertaining injury story is about a dog bite. A year earlier, I was playing football with some friends in the neighborhood, pretty close to where Porqchop lives now. We were playing in a different backyard than usual, I guess it was a road game for us. I don’t recall the play, but t he ball ended up in the yard next to us. No biggie, happens all the time in backyard football. And there wasn’t anything intimdating about this yard, there was just some medium size dog on a chain under the deck. This was by no means a dog like the one in The Sandlot.

So I go over to get our ball, and suddenly it’s man down. This little fucker had decided to run up and bite my ankle, and when I dropped he bit at my thigh too. I freed myself from the jaws of this homicidal-Cujo in ‘burbs and stumbled back to the field. My once white sock, a rarity for me then, was turning red right before my eyes.

Made my way into this kids house and his mom took a look at it and called my mom. Then I realized my sweatpants were damp against my thigh, and for the record it wasn’t because I had pissed myself. I looked and saw, well a not so pleasant site. That little mutt had taken a chunk out of my thigh. There was blood, jagged edges, fat and anything else you may see on “E.R”

And so it was off to St. Joe’s for some stitches, which hurt like a bitch. They had to give me an injection in the wound, and cut some flesh away to make for a neater stitch job. And no, you can’t see my scar.