It could only happen to me

Geez, I thought bad things only happened in threes? Whatever happened to that anyway?

Maybe I’m doing “3 of a kind” bad things? Or perhaps someone has a Voodoo doll with my name on it and they’ve cursed me? Yeah, that’s it, someone is sitting at home right now sticking pins in a weird looking doll.

This absolutely has nothing to do with the strange fact that every summer, for most of the last 6 years, I’ve managed to injure one of my lower extremities. Nope. Nor does it have anything to do with me being the klutz of the century. Uh huh, no it’s a curse I tell ‘ya.

Here’s the tally, for those of you that haven’t been keeping track:

Last week- first bad comment on this site (not so bad but it counts, ok?); then a hacker breaks into my domain and adds their own “ringtone” directory and steals my bandwidth; and finally our 50″ DLP T.V. fails to start on Wednesday morning - we think it’s blown its lamp ($350 to replace) and hope to have a replacement sometime this week.

Then, for the personal injury run of three bad things -

1. March: I fell flat on my face, or rather my jaw and split the skin and tissues right to the bone. The scar is still healing, and my jaw still hurts in places.

2. Yesterday - spectacular knee injury!

Usually my annual summer injury has something to do with my feet or ankles -sprains, badly torn tendons … last year, I didn’t injury myself, but it was only by the skin of my teeth that I missed out on that one. Chris and I were helping a friend put in a outdoor patio and pergola and had been using an auger? to dig 3 or 4 foot deep holes. What do I do? I backed right into one and landed with one of my legs in a hole almost to the hip. Scraped the heck out of my knee and was bruised pretty good, but since it was only scrapes and bruises I’m not counting it.

3. ? some unknown injury coming soon to a blogger near you - probably ME. I’m not going to count the bowel obstruction that I had the week before last, or my two year crohns flare … I think those items fall into their own special category.

Just what did I do to my knee? I’m sure some of you want to know? Even if you don’t want to know, I’m going to tell you, you know that don’t you?

The act of injury really isn’t all that interesting. I simply tripped and fell. And no I wasn’t drunk. I’ll admit that I had had two or three drinks, but they had been imbibed over 4 hours and I’d just finished a spectacular dinner of deep fried turkey, BBQ’d steak, cabbage rolls, lasagna, a multitude of salads (potato, pasta, veggie, coleslaw) and even a small piece of cake.

I was feeling a little cool so I was walking with my boarder back to the car to get my sweater. We were talking one minute and the next I was feeling my left ankle twist and I was headed for the pavement. All I could think of was “stick your arms out, don’t get your face AGAIN!” LOL I landed solidly on my hands and knees. Stop thinking dirty.

I had walked over a curb on a street that still needed it’s final paving so the curb wasn’t smooth, it was V shaped. My foot must have hit the wrong part of the curb and boom down I went.

Both knees were scraped since I was wearing shorts, but I knew my right knee had taken the brunt of the fall. I sat there in the middle of the road with my knees stinging listening to my boarder call out “Chris Tricia knelt” Chris Tricia Knelt” Remember she’s still learning English, so this was a perfect opportunity to teach her the correct phrase - No, Angela - it’s “Tricia fell, and tell him to get the hell over here!”

Chris and Angela helped me hobble back into the house and then my very drunk husband went back outside to the party. The girls took over and tended to my wounds, but as I looked at my right knee I knew I’d done a good one, or as it’s coming to be known “Pulled a Tricia”. I had a nice egg like swelling below and on the outside of my kneecap.

Hmm that’s never happened before. Looks like I have two kneecaps now, well actually a total of three. Kneecaps wear out eventually don’t they? Maybe it’s a good thing to have what appears to be a spare?

Maybe not.

I knew there was no way that I was going to get my husband to leave so I sat with my leg propped up with an ice pack on my knee. The swelling increased and increased. I was in PAIN. Hubby was in the hot tub. Nothing was going to get him out, and he was determined to get me in there. Uh huh Hon, I’ve got and open wound, I don’t think our hosts would really appreciate that. Not to mention that I couldn’t walk, and I’d probably wipe out trying to get into the darn Hot tub anyway.

The injury occurred around 9 p.m and I finally convinced Chris that I was badly injured and that we needed to leave at around 3 a.m. Naturally we were the last to leave as per usual. We decided that we’d leave early the next morning and get back to Toronto so I could go to a hospital and probably have the fluid drained from my knee. Know what time we left Brantford? 3:30 p.m. I’m not going to say anymore about that other than Chris is definitely in the doghouse. Big Time. He’s a great guy and all, but when he’s in party mode there’s obviously no stopping him.

On the way home we were approaching the African Lion Safari near Hamilton Ontario. Our Korean border had never been to anything like that before. It’s kind of a zoo with lions and Monkeys that you drive through, and the animals are often right at your car and or jumping on your car (or chasing it). I suggested that we go. Hey I wouldn’t have to walk, you just sit in the car for that, and it was something interesting for Angela to see. “Oh no”, Chris said, “we have to get you to a hospital”. Now the concern? What was one more half hour when I’d already been in major pain for at least 18 hours? Guess it was too much because we didn’t go.

We finally got home and then went to the hospital. The ER was fairly quiet for a Sunday. Usually it’s just packed. It took less than 1.5 hours for me to get in, go to minor treatment, go to xray and then be seen by a doctor. That’s pretty good and had nothing to do with my being staff there. It was quiet enough that everything was moving well.

The doctor said that I have a good sized pool of blood on my knee. It’s going to end up being one heck of a bruise that will travel down my shin. Nice- I have a huge family re-union BBQ next weekend. I might have a torn ligament, and or a torn meniscus. We’ll see how things go over the next day or two. I have to try to stay off my feet. Uhm the bathroom and bedroom are both upstairs, computer- main floor … TV’s not working so that doesn’t matter.

If I keep injuring myself like this I think I should invest in one of those electric stairway chairs. What do you think?

Did I tell ya Chris’ new nickname for me yet? It’s “Hop Along Hunny”

So, I’m sitting here with my leg propped up on a stool, ice pack over the knee, and I’m typing away. Moving my knee the tiniest bit hurts pretty bad, and I haven’t quite figured out the best way to get up and down the stairs without wanting to scream.

I really don’t understand my personal run of bad luck and all the falls I’ve had this year. I think it’s time to take matters into my own hands.

By taking matters into my own hands, I’m going to break my personal ethics here and beg for donations.

I want your bubble wrap and I want it ASAP. If you can’t send bubble wrap, money will do, and I’ll use that to buy new bubble wrap.

My plan is to wrap myself in bubble wrap everytime I need to go outside. I figure if I wind enough layers of it over my body I can’t possibly hurt myself if I fall. The sound of my falling might be pretty amazing too - can you imagine the sound of thousands of bubbles popping all at once?

Wait! I might go deaf if that happens.

Or worse, the sound might draw the bubble wrap popping fanatics out of the woodwork and I might get attacked by a mob of crazed bubble poppers.

That could be scary! I don’t even want to think about it.

Maybe I need to re-think this plan? What about a human sized gerbil ball that I could enclose myself in and just roll to where ever I want to go? Could anything go wrong with that plan?

Does anyone know if bubble wrap or heavy duty plexiglass (aka huge gerbil ball) offer protection against voodoo curses? or even genetically programmed klutziness?

I need answers people. Quick now, before I hurt myself again.