"No Trips To The Hospital" or How We Missed The Dinner Party!

First off, let me clearly say, we're all fine... so breathe deeply and put away the panic :)

Ok, moving on...

Yesterday we decided to spend part of the day building our machine shed doors. We got the framing cut and installed... the doors cut down... the cross pieces installed... we were ready to install the hinges. After looking through our fasteners boxes, we found we didn't have the right length bolts and we'd need to get some. Not wanting to make a trip out, we decided to call it quits for the day... which would also leave us plenty of time to ready ourselves for the dinner party.

We started cleaning up, put one door in the machine shed, standing up against the wall... got the other one, I took one end, Shawn on the other... walk into the machine shed and all I hear is "Whack"... followed by tons of swearing that I wont repeat here. I look back and he's holding his head... I know he's whacked it.... its very short in the machine shed and he's freakishly tall.

I tell him to let go of the door so I can put it against the wall... he does... I move it... then he says to me "Is it bleeding?" He moves his hand and there's a huge amount of blood everywhere on his head ... I pause for a moment and say "A little" and I look up and notice two nail heads sticking out of one of the roof rafters about an inch or inchand a half... I then realize he not only whacked his head, but caught it on a nail head!

I cover the with my hand and I try to hurry him over to the house before the initial shock wears off... its a good distance and I need him closer to the house and the first aid supplies and somewhere I can watch him while I get what I need.

He starts to feel faint and nauseous as the blood is now pouring all over the both of us, but I urge him forward and remind him to breathe slowly and deeply. He's a big guy and I don't want him going down and I dont really want to deal with the dogs inside, so I set him on the back steps and put his hand over the cut while I go for paper towels and gauze.

I come back out and put the gauze over and wipe up what blood I can... We discuss the fact that he doesn't remember EVER having a tetanus shot... I leave him to get my computer to find out if any urgent care clinics are open, one is... way on the east side of ottawa and closes in less than an hour.

I have another look at the cut and its not horrible, it looks gruesome of course, but is only about an inch or so long total... in a "Y" shape. I decide then that we should go to the hospital, if for no other reason than the tetanus shot... so I load him into the car, take the dogs out to pee and get in the car. Shawn already had the GPS going with the route to the hospital.

So off we went... he was still in a fair bit of pain.. and feeling shaky... but he never did throw up... we arrive at the hospital just before 3pm and wait for triage... the nurse takes all the info, his temp, blood pressure, cleans up the blood off his forehead and gives him some tylenol.

We waited and waited... he felt better as time went on, of course... we considered leaving... I mean we had a dinner party to attend!! But we were still concerned about the tetanus shot, so we stayed.

We weren't there very long when I called our dinner party hosts and told them what had happened and we decided since we didnt know how long the hospital would take, we would reschedule... I felt so bad... I know she'd been cooking at least all day, if not for days before hand!!

Finally around 7pm, we were taken back... the nurse gave the tetanus shot and said the doc would be in to look at the wound. The staff was very friendly... and the doc cleaned it up some more and suggested he just glue the wound instead of stitching it... then he wouldn't have to go through the pain of having local freezing injected to the site, etc. Plus stitches in the top of your head have a tendency to pull quite a bit which would cause some discomfort until they came out.

Out came the crazy glue and he put a big glob on to cover the wound and sent us on our way... we were walking to the car just before 730pm. We headed straight home to let the dogs out and then we opened cans of soup to eat... we were starving!!

Just minutes after we got in the door, our host of the dinner party we missed called to check on Shawn, which I thought was very nice and thoughtful. They chatted a while and assured them he was ok. I'm sure he'll show off his injury at work tomorrow ;)

I started to feel more sick as the day progressed, I've been fighting a cold for a few days... and I was doing that wonderful fever / chills thing. We were in bed just after 10pm, early for us.. and I had like 3 layers of clothes on as I felt like I was freezing to death. I woke up around 2am and was finally warmer.