Hosp
04-28-2007, 02:24 PM
Some of you may have read this on my myspace page, but since I hardly ever post anymore I figured I'd share it too.
<hr>
About 3 weeks ago I was supposed to go to the Christina Aguilera concert with my friend Cindy at the Nassau Coliseum. Her husband Sean is a professional lighting technician who is working on the tour and was going to get us backstage to hang out with the crew, and pretty damn close to the stage. Except about 4 days before this, Cindy found a way to fall down the stairs in her own house and break the left side of her right foot.
Being the compassionate person that I am, I cursed her name for a couple of minutes for thwarting my attempts at sneaking into the Pussycat Dolls dressing room (Christina's opening act) . But once I got that out of my system, I wanted to be sure she was doing good and feeling well, so I started to put together a "Get well soon" care package and told her that I was going to come out to her house the next weekend to give her the gift, crash for the night, and then go to work the next morning. She told me that she was feeling the love from quite a few people and was a little overwhelmed and needed some time to herself, which I understood, so those plans were squashed.
So about a week later, I got the good fortune of getting 2 days in a row off at work, and the first day was going to be taken up by Dave and Casey's Bachelor/Bachelorette party, so I put it out there once again to come out on Saturday, crash, go to work on Sunday. This time she conceded to let me come out for Saturday, but told me I had to go home the same day. No problem, I was just worried and wanted to see how she was doing.
Went to the party Friday. Strip Clubs and Radio promotions really don't mix. It's hard to get that faux intimacy you need during a lap dance when there are 500 people standing around watching. But since the usual crew comes out it's a good time as it always is. Wanted to get home earlier, get home at 3:30 in the morning, but it wasn't going to deter me from visiting Cindy the next day.
Get up about 8-ish, want to get out to Cindy's train station at noon to maximize my hang out time so I haul ass and actually make it. When she picks me up, it's your typical friendly small talk "How you doing?", "How you feeling?", "Do you smell that?", and I really can't judge how she's doing. But when we get back to her place, and she gets out of the car and I see her walking in her boot, it hurts me a little. I don't like to see my friends hurt, and the closer the friend the worse it is. So we go in the house, get the full run down on what's been going on and get a really good look at the X-ray of her foot.
So I give her my care package: the first 3 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which she turns down since she's going back to work soon and won't have the time to watch), a stuffed kitty (that I tried my damndest to match her real cat, Lexus), a copy of 13th Floor playing at C.B.G.B's(my friend JP's band who we saw{not at C.B.G.B's}), and a couple of other trinkets. She seemed to enjoy it, but she was a little stir crazy and wanted to get out a bit, so we hit the road so she can get out of the house, and I can get a tour of the town.
So we make the rounds, and it feels like we've seen every house in the tri-county area, when we cross this little bridge and get stopped at this intersection. The natural flow of traffic kind of turns to the right, which was the direction we were going, but the older sedan that was in front of us was trying to go straight, and had to wait for all the on coming traffic coming around that bend. I'm in the passenger seat, seatbelt on, turned towards Cindy because we're talking, when I see her look up into the rear view mirror and begin to tense. Just then there is this loud bang as a Ford Explorer smashes into the back of Cindy's Durango. The force was enough to push us about 2 feet forward as the Explorer recoiled about 5 feet back. We get thrown forward in our seats, Cindy was sitting pretty square and had her hands on the steering wheel and had some compression, but I was sitting at an angle, and didn't see it coming, my shoulder takes the brunt of my fat ass' momentum getting thrown forward and getting stopped by the seatbelt, twisting my back as it happens. Just as this is going on, I see the driver of the old sedan in front of us look back to see what the noise was, then putter on down the road.
We get out to survey the damage, and we were hit pretty bluntly.
As we start looking, the guy starts moving, but Cindy tells the guy to stop, or he'll run over his license plate which fell off on impact, which he does. As he throws all of his weight against his door (because he got some frame damage) we get to meet Mr. Johns and the whole Johns clan. As Cindy is trying to pull herself together and call the police, Mr. Johns gets out, and tries to start some nervous small talk, as Mrs. Johns gives all of us (especially Mr. Johns) the evil eye. Grandma Johns gets out of the back seat, goes on the sidewalk, and tries to wave traffic around the 2 large SUV's with people standing around them that are obviously going nowhere. As we're standing there, Mr. Johns is nervously going through his wallet to find his insurance card, but "mistakenly" pulls out both his other car's insurance card, and the insurance card for his motorcycle, which comes off as a "we have something in common" move, since Cindy is wearing her Harley Davidson Japan t-shirt. He also finds the time to tell us that the whole Johns family was on their way to a restaurant because Uncle Johns (Mr. Johns' brother) was being honored because he saved the life of someone at a Con Ed plant, and was getting the highest honor a civilian can get in New Jersey. Just then, the police officer shows up (at least 10 minutes later from 4 blocks away) and gives us to pull around to the parking lot right next to us.
As the officer is taking down information from the insurance cards and IDs, we get to meet Junior Johns, who is nice enough to tell everyone that the dinner is starting (which considering that they were 20 minutes from the restaurant, they were running pretty late) and "Paris" Johns, the 14 year old who is whining the entire time, texting on her phone, and tries to use this as an example of why she needs a Gucci-lined Escalade when she turns 16. Grandma Johns finally stops waving cars around us, and Mrs. Johns continues staring daggers. Mr. Johns takes this time to tell us how proud he was of his son, because the day before was Cultural day, and even though he's Irish/Italian, he dressed up in red socks, white shorts, and a blue t-shirt and told everyone "I'm an American", which should be kind of noble, but coming from Mr. Johns just kinds of seems smarmy. Cindy and I lock eyes just to make sure we're on the same page. Luckily, the officer comes over, hands us our IDs, calls Mr Johns over to give him his summons, and we head over to Cindy's house to survey the damage.
The most noticeable thing (besides the giant dent in the back door) is that the door isn't closing at all, the locking mechanism is just not catching.. The window pane itself is knocked loose as the weather stripping is coming undone all around, the fender had buckled on the sides, and even the tail pipe is bent in. As I try to figure out how to bungee chord the door closed, Cindy calls her lawyer, at home, but he didn't seem to mind. I could almost hear the dollar signs ca-chinging. He tells us that no matter what, even if we weren't feeling anything yet, we should go to the Emergency room and get checked out. So as I'm securing the door, Cindy gets on the phone with the insurance company, both reporting the accident, and trying to find out how I am covered under her policy. They tell us it's in her literature, and instead of just doing a quick check on their computer, we have to go hunt the information down ourselves. Which, thankfully, the hunting doesn't take that long, but the deciphering of the information took a little longer. So off we go to JFK's Emergency room.
Being from the Bronx, I'm used to emergency rooms being very chaotic. Even if you walk in bleeding, they have to take into consideration the amount you are bleeding and you still may have to wait an hour to be checked, but you'll get to watch Telemundo while you wait. We walked into JFK, filled out a form at the front desk, and by the time we sit in the waiting room, my name is called to come into the triage office. As I'm halfway through the process, there is a doctor coming into the room asking if they could take Cindy and I because they were slow in fast track. Triage man says he's almost done with me, and they just say take Cindy and they'll bring me back to her. As soon as I'm done in triage, I walk back to the seat and get immediately called into another room to give insurance information, then walked back to the other room. There, we tease each other and Cindy tells me that the doctor helping her was the same that helped her with her foot. We get the quick once over from the docs, then they prescribe Robaxin and Dolobid, but before I go they give me a Percocet, which I don't think I've ever taken before. They then tell me that I'm not going anywhere, and that yes, I'll be staying in Metuchen that night (Besides being recommended 3 days bed rest and got a letter to miss work). So HA, I got my way anyway, but can you believe the lengths I have to go to? Cindy wasn't given the Percocet, instead she was given a shot in her ass, and we were sent on our merry way.
When we got back to her house, we sat down on her very comfortable sectional sofa, reclined, and started watching an Eddie Izzard special on her lovely big screen TV. I don't know if he's really as funny as I was finding him, but DAMN that Percocet worked quick. I guess since I don't drink and haven't been one to do recreational drugs of any kind, it kind of hit me hard. We started watching some other stuff, I think it was Heroes, and were talking, probably not making much sense, and we fell asleep, sitting on the couch, drooling on ourselves like an elderly couple.
On Sunday morning/afternoon (still not sure, that was a really good pill) after we pull ourselves together, it's decided that I need to go to Target to get some fresh underwear (since I'm not one to go commando) and a fresh t-shirt, and we need to pick up our prescriptions. After we do that and pick up some food, we head back to get all of our information scanned and put together so what ever comes up we'll be prepared. And I think because of a combination of her being concerned about my well being, being ordered to have the 3 days rest, having to pick up the police report and possibly seeing the lawyer, and me being dead sexy, she suggests I should stay one more night. I knew I'd appreciate hanging out one more day, plus I still wasn't in the mood for the 2 hour train ride home, so I agreed.
The next day we had an agenda: Get to the Auto Body place, get some grub, and get copies of everything to the lawyer, and we did it all. And since the next day was her first day back at work in 2 weeks, and she was psyching herself up for it, it was decided that I'd go home... after we watched this weeks episode of Heroes. Which it was a fine episode, but we were cutting it really close to catch my train, and it came down to me jumping from her car and running up the stairs to just get there in time. But this was probably a bad decision to wait that late, because my head started bobbing within 5 minutes of being on the train, and I still had to get to the city and catch the subway up to the Bronx. They were both LONG rides, but I made it home in one piece. And I had another day to rest before I had to go back to work, so I got to sleep some. And damn, if they weren't right that you'd feel it more a couple of days later. By the first morning I was back at work I was feeling it, everything was sore. Even things that weren't bothering me the days before started bothering me. And it just got worse today, because my meds ran out last night and I was going it without any painkillers, which is good when you work at the world's most famous and busiest single toy stores in the world. I'm hanging in there, and if everything plays out the ways people are making it sound like, it will all be worth it.
Now, my shoulder has an almost constant pain, when I let my arm hang it will go numb within 5 minutes, and my fingers were a little blue yesterday afternoon. So to say I'm a little worried is an understatement.
<hr>
About 3 weeks ago I was supposed to go to the Christina Aguilera concert with my friend Cindy at the Nassau Coliseum. Her husband Sean is a professional lighting technician who is working on the tour and was going to get us backstage to hang out with the crew, and pretty damn close to the stage. Except about 4 days before this, Cindy found a way to fall down the stairs in her own house and break the left side of her right foot.
Being the compassionate person that I am, I cursed her name for a couple of minutes for thwarting my attempts at sneaking into the Pussycat Dolls dressing room (Christina's opening act) . But once I got that out of my system, I wanted to be sure she was doing good and feeling well, so I started to put together a "Get well soon" care package and told her that I was going to come out to her house the next weekend to give her the gift, crash for the night, and then go to work the next morning. She told me that she was feeling the love from quite a few people and was a little overwhelmed and needed some time to herself, which I understood, so those plans were squashed.
So about a week later, I got the good fortune of getting 2 days in a row off at work, and the first day was going to be taken up by Dave and Casey's Bachelor/Bachelorette party, so I put it out there once again to come out on Saturday, crash, go to work on Sunday. This time she conceded to let me come out for Saturday, but told me I had to go home the same day. No problem, I was just worried and wanted to see how she was doing.
Went to the party Friday. Strip Clubs and Radio promotions really don't mix. It's hard to get that faux intimacy you need during a lap dance when there are 500 people standing around watching. But since the usual crew comes out it's a good time as it always is. Wanted to get home earlier, get home at 3:30 in the morning, but it wasn't going to deter me from visiting Cindy the next day.
Get up about 8-ish, want to get out to Cindy's train station at noon to maximize my hang out time so I haul ass and actually make it. When she picks me up, it's your typical friendly small talk "How you doing?", "How you feeling?", "Do you smell that?", and I really can't judge how she's doing. But when we get back to her place, and she gets out of the car and I see her walking in her boot, it hurts me a little. I don't like to see my friends hurt, and the closer the friend the worse it is. So we go in the house, get the full run down on what's been going on and get a really good look at the X-ray of her foot.
So I give her my care package: the first 3 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which she turns down since she's going back to work soon and won't have the time to watch), a stuffed kitty (that I tried my damndest to match her real cat, Lexus), a copy of 13th Floor playing at C.B.G.B's(my friend JP's band who we saw{not at C.B.G.B's}), and a couple of other trinkets. She seemed to enjoy it, but she was a little stir crazy and wanted to get out a bit, so we hit the road so she can get out of the house, and I can get a tour of the town.
So we make the rounds, and it feels like we've seen every house in the tri-county area, when we cross this little bridge and get stopped at this intersection. The natural flow of traffic kind of turns to the right, which was the direction we were going, but the older sedan that was in front of us was trying to go straight, and had to wait for all the on coming traffic coming around that bend. I'm in the passenger seat, seatbelt on, turned towards Cindy because we're talking, when I see her look up into the rear view mirror and begin to tense. Just then there is this loud bang as a Ford Explorer smashes into the back of Cindy's Durango. The force was enough to push us about 2 feet forward as the Explorer recoiled about 5 feet back. We get thrown forward in our seats, Cindy was sitting pretty square and had her hands on the steering wheel and had some compression, but I was sitting at an angle, and didn't see it coming, my shoulder takes the brunt of my fat ass' momentum getting thrown forward and getting stopped by the seatbelt, twisting my back as it happens. Just as this is going on, I see the driver of the old sedan in front of us look back to see what the noise was, then putter on down the road.
We get out to survey the damage, and we were hit pretty bluntly.
As we start looking, the guy starts moving, but Cindy tells the guy to stop, or he'll run over his license plate which fell off on impact, which he does. As he throws all of his weight against his door (because he got some frame damage) we get to meet Mr. Johns and the whole Johns clan. As Cindy is trying to pull herself together and call the police, Mr. Johns gets out, and tries to start some nervous small talk, as Mrs. Johns gives all of us (especially Mr. Johns) the evil eye. Grandma Johns gets out of the back seat, goes on the sidewalk, and tries to wave traffic around the 2 large SUV's with people standing around them that are obviously going nowhere. As we're standing there, Mr. Johns is nervously going through his wallet to find his insurance card, but "mistakenly" pulls out both his other car's insurance card, and the insurance card for his motorcycle, which comes off as a "we have something in common" move, since Cindy is wearing her Harley Davidson Japan t-shirt. He also finds the time to tell us that the whole Johns family was on their way to a restaurant because Uncle Johns (Mr. Johns' brother) was being honored because he saved the life of someone at a Con Ed plant, and was getting the highest honor a civilian can get in New Jersey. Just then, the police officer shows up (at least 10 minutes later from 4 blocks away) and gives us to pull around to the parking lot right next to us.
As the officer is taking down information from the insurance cards and IDs, we get to meet Junior Johns, who is nice enough to tell everyone that the dinner is starting (which considering that they were 20 minutes from the restaurant, they were running pretty late) and "Paris" Johns, the 14 year old who is whining the entire time, texting on her phone, and tries to use this as an example of why she needs a Gucci-lined Escalade when she turns 16. Grandma Johns finally stops waving cars around us, and Mrs. Johns continues staring daggers. Mr. Johns takes this time to tell us how proud he was of his son, because the day before was Cultural day, and even though he's Irish/Italian, he dressed up in red socks, white shorts, and a blue t-shirt and told everyone "I'm an American", which should be kind of noble, but coming from Mr. Johns just kinds of seems smarmy. Cindy and I lock eyes just to make sure we're on the same page. Luckily, the officer comes over, hands us our IDs, calls Mr Johns over to give him his summons, and we head over to Cindy's house to survey the damage.
The most noticeable thing (besides the giant dent in the back door) is that the door isn't closing at all, the locking mechanism is just not catching.. The window pane itself is knocked loose as the weather stripping is coming undone all around, the fender had buckled on the sides, and even the tail pipe is bent in. As I try to figure out how to bungee chord the door closed, Cindy calls her lawyer, at home, but he didn't seem to mind. I could almost hear the dollar signs ca-chinging. He tells us that no matter what, even if we weren't feeling anything yet, we should go to the Emergency room and get checked out. So as I'm securing the door, Cindy gets on the phone with the insurance company, both reporting the accident, and trying to find out how I am covered under her policy. They tell us it's in her literature, and instead of just doing a quick check on their computer, we have to go hunt the information down ourselves. Which, thankfully, the hunting doesn't take that long, but the deciphering of the information took a little longer. So off we go to JFK's Emergency room.
Being from the Bronx, I'm used to emergency rooms being very chaotic. Even if you walk in bleeding, they have to take into consideration the amount you are bleeding and you still may have to wait an hour to be checked, but you'll get to watch Telemundo while you wait. We walked into JFK, filled out a form at the front desk, and by the time we sit in the waiting room, my name is called to come into the triage office. As I'm halfway through the process, there is a doctor coming into the room asking if they could take Cindy and I because they were slow in fast track. Triage man says he's almost done with me, and they just say take Cindy and they'll bring me back to her. As soon as I'm done in triage, I walk back to the seat and get immediately called into another room to give insurance information, then walked back to the other room. There, we tease each other and Cindy tells me that the doctor helping her was the same that helped her with her foot. We get the quick once over from the docs, then they prescribe Robaxin and Dolobid, but before I go they give me a Percocet, which I don't think I've ever taken before. They then tell me that I'm not going anywhere, and that yes, I'll be staying in Metuchen that night (Besides being recommended 3 days bed rest and got a letter to miss work). So HA, I got my way anyway, but can you believe the lengths I have to go to? Cindy wasn't given the Percocet, instead she was given a shot in her ass, and we were sent on our merry way.
When we got back to her house, we sat down on her very comfortable sectional sofa, reclined, and started watching an Eddie Izzard special on her lovely big screen TV. I don't know if he's really as funny as I was finding him, but DAMN that Percocet worked quick. I guess since I don't drink and haven't been one to do recreational drugs of any kind, it kind of hit me hard. We started watching some other stuff, I think it was Heroes, and were talking, probably not making much sense, and we fell asleep, sitting on the couch, drooling on ourselves like an elderly couple.
On Sunday morning/afternoon (still not sure, that was a really good pill) after we pull ourselves together, it's decided that I need to go to Target to get some fresh underwear (since I'm not one to go commando) and a fresh t-shirt, and we need to pick up our prescriptions. After we do that and pick up some food, we head back to get all of our information scanned and put together so what ever comes up we'll be prepared. And I think because of a combination of her being concerned about my well being, being ordered to have the 3 days rest, having to pick up the police report and possibly seeing the lawyer, and me being dead sexy, she suggests I should stay one more night. I knew I'd appreciate hanging out one more day, plus I still wasn't in the mood for the 2 hour train ride home, so I agreed.
The next day we had an agenda: Get to the Auto Body place, get some grub, and get copies of everything to the lawyer, and we did it all. And since the next day was her first day back at work in 2 weeks, and she was psyching herself up for it, it was decided that I'd go home... after we watched this weeks episode of Heroes. Which it was a fine episode, but we were cutting it really close to catch my train, and it came down to me jumping from her car and running up the stairs to just get there in time. But this was probably a bad decision to wait that late, because my head started bobbing within 5 minutes of being on the train, and I still had to get to the city and catch the subway up to the Bronx. They were both LONG rides, but I made it home in one piece. And I had another day to rest before I had to go back to work, so I got to sleep some. And damn, if they weren't right that you'd feel it more a couple of days later. By the first morning I was back at work I was feeling it, everything was sore. Even things that weren't bothering me the days before started bothering me. And it just got worse today, because my meds ran out last night and I was going it without any painkillers, which is good when you work at the world's most famous and busiest single toy stores in the world. I'm hanging in there, and if everything plays out the ways people are making it sound like, it will all be worth it.
Now, my shoulder has an almost constant pain, when I let my arm hang it will go numb within 5 minutes, and my fingers were a little blue yesterday afternoon. So to say I'm a little worried is an understatement.