clumsy

[Guest guest]

Is anyone else as clumsy as I am? (Oh, right, I forgot about Regina there for a

minute. Though I don't think she's clumsy so much as just unlucky.)

Honestly, I don't know why it is that I'm still alive. Here's the latest

adventure.

My church hires a bus and does a shopping trip to Chicago (from Indianapolis)

every November. About 40-45 women go. We watch chick-flicks all the way up,

spend Friday at the outlet malls and Saturday on Michigan Avenue doing the

high-end stores. This is a wonderful getaway and I look forward to it all year

long! So, Friday at 7am I got on the bus (huge fancy tour bus) with 44 of my

closest friends and we were on our way. We stopped at a rest stop about 9 and

that is when it happened.

I was at the top of the stairs to get off the bus and stopped to put some stuff

in the trash bag at the front of the bus. Took a step which turned out to be

into midair instead of onto the next step. Turns out the steps were CURVED like

a curving staircase instead of straight down like a normal bus! So I go tumbling

ass over teakettle down the steps - literally somersaulting all of the way over

at least once - and go catapulting out of the bus BACKWARDS and land on the

pavement on the back of my head. Wrenched my neck, sprained my hand and split my

head open.

Two of the gals on the bus were nurses and they were beside me in a flash with

bags of ice and a towel to deal with the blood. (Head wounds bleed like a mother

don't you know.) I'm all crying and fuzzy and EMBARRASED as hell. And I can't

even cuss since I'm the minister's wife. Geez. The nurses decree that I have to

go to the ER for some stitches. Nooooooo I want to go to the outlet mall and I

don't want to mess up everyone else's day. I talk them into letting me wait til

we get to Chicago. OK, if I promise to keep the ice on my head.

So a couple of hours later I'm in a suburban Chicago ER and people are shining

lights in my eyeballs and x-raying my hand and hip (sprained and bruised) and

neck (wrenched, whatever that means) and giving me 5 shots right into the head

wound to numb it (big ouch) and then putting 10 staples into my head. They made

me stay there a long time so they could determine that I didn't have a

concussion. Finally they let me go and I met up with my friends at the outlet

mall, though I really didn't have the strength for it at that point.

Here are the good things that happened:

* They didn't give me pain meds so I got to have a glass of wine at dinner.

* They used staples instead of stitches so I didn't get my head shaved.

* They took my insurance card (which I actually had with me, what a

miracle) so I didn't have to use my shopping money at the ER.

Here are the bad things that happened:

* Some idiot on the bus called my husband right away and so I had to call

him back immediately and argue my bloody head off (lierally) to keep him from

coming to get me and spoiling the rest of my weekend.

* Since they hadn't given me anything for pain I was pretty miserable most

of the time.

* I missed almost a whole day of outlet shopping.

If you are still reading at this point, God bless you.

hugs,

Ann