What is now, just barely, a funny story (and disgusting TMI)

Anyone who follows Gail on twitter (you can get to her feed at right) already knows a bit about my exciting incident last Friday. Here are the gory details.

[NB: There is absolutely no way to tell this story without it being way too much information. Proceed at your own risk. It is gross.]

Very early on Friday, just after breakfast, at perhaps 6:45 am, I was on the toilet for one of my many morning pees (of course, I'd already been up at least three times through the night, but apparently it wasn't enough). All of a sudden I was throwing up. Now, this came as a shock, since I haven't thrown up in at least a month. And this wasn't a paltry little dry heave. My entire breakfast was coming back to haunt me.

Because I haven't thrown up in so long, I was ill prepared. A few months ago, I wouldn't have sat down on the toilet at that time of day without also carrying a bowl along for just such an eventuality. But since I hadn't had such foresight, I stood quickly to spin around and deposit my remaining throw-up in the toilet. But anyone who has ever been inside our tiny bathroom will understand what a terrible mistake I made when I turned right instead of left.

As I turned right, with extreme speed, I bashed my face, in particular the bridge of my nose, extremely EXTREMELY hard onto the end of a towel rack that was very firmly attached to the wall and my nose did not fare well. The towel rack was relatively unscathed.

Suddenly, I was dripping what seemed like gallons of blood out of my nose directly into the toilet (along with the remaining puke, which was also strewn around the bathroom), and was absolutely convinced my nose was broken beyond repair. I managed a plaintive call of "Help me! Help me!" and Gail and Leigh rushed to my aid.

Leigh's first question was "What coming out you nose, Mama?" I was not in a state to answer, and so then she got worried, and then she got hysterical. Gail, got a towel onto my nose, and then left to get Leigh calmed down. Once Leigh was settled, Gail still didn't know what had happened, but came back to lead me to the couch, where I managed to explain the incident. Much icing of the nose ensued, as well as a call to my dad (at 5:30 his time) to figure out if I needed to go to the emergency room or wait for my doctor's office to open (Answer: If you think you may have broken your nose, but can still breathe OK, you can probably wait and go to your own doctor), and a call to the midwife to cancel our imminent appointment, and her admonition to take arnica, quickly. Throughout this recovery period, Leigh was bringing me blankets and stuffed animals and admonishing me to rest and feel better. She adjusted quickly.

I was queasy and dizzy for much of the rest of the day, and very very tired, but my doctor said my nose probably isn't broken, and if it is, it's a minor break (I'd need an xray to confirm, but don't want one due to pregnancy, and even if broken, it probably isn't bad enough to do anything about anyway. Though it would be a nice thing to hold over the kid's head later). Since then, the swelling has gone down, bruising is minimal (yay arnica!) and I mostly look like myself, though I have yet to recover from a day of missed work.

So, let this be a lesson to you. I'm not sure what the lesson is, though. Perhaps something about throwing up on the floor perhaps being better than the alternative.