Rescue Me
Which Sex in the City character are you? I’m such a Miranda.
There’s nothing new to watch online and I’m finding myself re-watching Sex and the City. Something about its now-quaint “hot topics” and all of Carrie’s been-around-the-block-but-a-still-kooky-wide-eyed-ingenue-at-35-and-counting affectations are ridiculous yet comforting to nestle into for 30 minutes at a time. In one episode, gal pal Miranda gets Lasik eye surgery and refuses to ask for help after her procedure, least of all from a man. “No rescue!” she insists through a haze of Valium. It turns out she did need rescuing, and her sexy-time friend Steve is the one who ends up doing the rescuing and teaching her to open her heart to love.
Since I myself am starring in No Sex and the City, it was two platonic friends who came to my rescue last Tuesday. A few hours before the book club ladies were due to gather at my place, I was cleaning my porch which had been looking like a dump for—well, forever. The inside of the old TV I used for the Last Spookstore art show last year was lying right in the midst of all the clutter. As I attempted to move it out of sight, a piece I was holding on to broke off, causing a jagged metal edge to slice through my right hand as the whole thing fell to the floor.
I was concerned by the amount of blood that was pumping out and I suspected that book club would have to be postponed. I was annoyed, because I had a chocolate cake waiting to be iced and a savory tart with onions and bacon that was ready to be popped into the oven. The next thing I saw made me forget everything and sent me into bona fide panic: what looked like the ends of a stack of spaghetti was popping out between flaps of shredded skin. Because I quietly implode when I panic, this is how I reacted as I looked down curiously at my hand:
With drops of blood hitting my shins and feet, I ran to the front house and knocked rapidly on the side door. I could hear Noemi mumble, “Coming…” Being a middle school teacher, she was on summer vacation and was about to lay down for a late afternoon nap.
“Hurry, something’s happened!”
Even though I was applying pressure on the cut, a considerable pool of blood forming on the cement below. I thought I feel pretty functional. My left hand is fine. I could just drive myself to the hospital. By then both Noemi and Monica were at the door. Seeing all the blood, Noemi immediately grabbed a lavender-colored cloth napkin.
“We have to stop the blood.”
“That’s too nice. Can’t you get something else?”
“Don’t worry about that. It’s an emergency!”
“Well, I’m not going to bleed to death in the next two minutes while you find a rag or something.”
“Helen, please just use this.”
What a waste, I thought. Now she has an uneven number of napkins and even if she bought a replacement, it’ll be new and a different shade of purple than the other, more worn, ones. C’mon, you know what I’m talking about. I was annoyed on Noemi’s behalf as I reluctantly wrapped my hand in the napkin.
“You know, I think I can just drive myself to the hospital.”
But Noemi was already pulling her car up to the driveway and Monica was washing my blood off the concrete.
“You should use bleach,” Noemi said as she drove us away.
I knew that I could potentially sit for hours at urgent care so being the fully-grown woman that I am, I called my mommy. She told me to go immediately to the office of an orthopedic surgeon near Koreatown, a connection from her old medical supply store. The doctor wasn’t accepting any more patients so late in the day but my mom is the champion of pulling strings. Thanks to my mom, I was getting prepped for surgery in less than an hour after I had my accident. By then she had made her way to Dr Lee’s office too.
I then called Sandra, a fellow book clubber who also happens to live in the front house. I told her what happened and wondered if book club could still go on: I would only be getting a few stitches—a simple procedure—and I’d already gone to the trouble of making a chocolate cake and a savory onion and bacon tart. Neither the cake or the tart dissuaded Sandra from her firm belief that book club should be canceled. She notified everyone and the longer I sat in the doctor’s office, the more I realized she was right.
While waiting for the doctor, Noemi and I started getting a little giggly and started snapping pictures. The sudden and dramatic nature of the situation was rather hilarious. Plus, I was embarrassed by the fact that I seem to be the queen victim of minor health catastrophes: disc herniation, shingles in my early 40s, eyes swollen shut because of sap from some dangerous succulent in the garden, etc., etc. etc. Gah.
When the doctor finally appeared, he told me to take the napkin off the wound. He said it would be less painful if I did it myself, especially since a part of my skin was stuck dry on the fabric. Once I carefully peeled the napkin off, the blood started flowing again.
“It’s hard to see what’s happening because there’s so much blood.”
“I saw some noodle-y stuff coming out. Do you know what that was?”
“It was probably fatty tissue.”
The doctor tapped at the top of my forefinger and thumb.
“Can you feel this? And this? And this?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That means the nerves weren’t damaged. I’m going to suture your hand now.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re going to get stitches. But you’ll get some local anesthesia first.”
He gave me about six shots. Each one hurt way more than the cut itself and I wheezed and groaned. I was still rattled from the pain of the shots when my hand went numb. As I calmed down, I became aware of the strangely thick and cool blood trickling down along the hand that now felt no pain. I could hear and feel the thickness and texture of the thread being pulled through my skin, then the tug afterwards that ensured the stitch was taut. I felt calm because I knew I was going to be ok but there was a part of me somewhere deep that was accosted by the trauma of all of this.
“Ok, it’s reasonably fixed. Now for the tetanus shot.”
I like reasonable people and reasonable compromises but I’m less a fan of my hand being “reasonably fixed”. Still, the doctor was clearly the boss in the situation and I was powerless to change my hand’s “reasonable” status to “beyond reasonable doubt”, “ideal”, “perfect”. I looked down at my hand. The blood hadn’t been cleaned up and the stitches looked violent and barbaric. After Dr Lee wrapped up the wound in gauze, I squirmed like a bug flipped on its back until I figured out a way to roll off the bed with one arm.
(Here are a couple of photos the stitches here, if you wanna take a look.)
My mom and I grabbed dinner so that I could take the pain meds as soon as they were ready at the pharmacy. I hid my still bloody and gauzed-up hand in my hair as I slurped my pho. Once the anesthesia began to wear off, it wore off quickly and was replaced by a stinging, throbbing pain. I started to shake my hand to deal with it, like I’ve seen some diabetic patients do at my parents’ medical supply store. We picked up the medicine and came back home. The driveway had no longer had evidence of what took place a few hours back; I guess bleach really was the way to go. Inside the house, my mom took off my pants and helped me into pajamas. She braided my hair so it wouldn’t get tangled and started to organize the kitchen, which was mid-prep for the book club meeting what was no longer happening. It was déjà vu, back to that overly-long episode of disc hernia and chronic pain. When my mom finally left, I took another Tylenol #3 and finished icing the chocolate cake with my left hand. The former didn’t to do anything for the pain but the latter brought back some normalcy to the crazy day.
Five days later, there is still some blood under my nails and in the creases of my palm. I’ve moved up from Tylenol to Norco (similar to Vicodin). My body, released from the initial shock, has since been unfurling itself into stupor and slumber. Friends have been calling and texting to see how they could be helpful. They are so lovely, my friends, but I don’t know what to say. The Miranda in me is unconvinced that all the hullabaloo is necessary. There are some persistent friends. Karin brought me some sparkling water because I told her carbonation is a more fun way to keep hydrated. Monica and Noemi washed my hair. Nica has offered to help me write this blog post*, brush my hair and pick me up for church. I don’t have a feminist agenda about self-sufficiency like Miranda but reaching out for help, or taking help that is offered, feels completely foreign.
In the end, Miranda married Steve and moved off the island of Manhattan to Brooklyn. I, in my ongoing story, have to keep learning the lesson that I am not an island. I’ll be handicapped for a while yet so it appears that the opportunity is at hand to practice asking for help. Pun intended. Carrie would approve.
* I didn’t need help writing this blog thanks to the dictation function on my iPhone and my ability to edit with my left hand.