The crew had dug a hole in the ground and, as per law, we needed to put some Caution tape around it. So, I grudgingly set forth and lamented I wasn’t doing the world any favors. I mean, if you fall in a hole in the ground because you’re not looking, you kind of have it coming. If a warning label saves you, Darwin didn’t get his. Warning labels: polluting the gene pool for decades.

Then, a bit later, unhooking a trailer and the trailer got away and was rolling downhill toward my money err house. I decided to stop it by grabbing it. This was extraordinarily stupid but you sometimes think correctly and sometimes don’t when things happen quickly. At the same time, my Bobcat operator was heading the trailer off with the Bobcat. He hit it from the right and I grabbed it from the left. Well, Bobcat beats skinny white boy and the trailer hitch swung right into my leg and knocked for a flip. I got up, dusted myself off, checked me out (hey, how you doin’?) and was content that I wasn’t bleeding. But it fucking hurt. Then, my foreman informs me that I have a hole in my ankle. I look down and say Wow, I can see the bone. There it was, white and eerily magnificent sort of like my vasa deferentia. But definitely bone. It wasn’t bleeding much. I got out a first aid kit, stuffed the hole with neosporin, plugged it with a bandage and drove myself to the walk in clinic. At the doc, it started bleeding like mad.

They cleaned it out, scolded me for stuffing it with neosporin since that also happens to keep bacteria in. I should have washed it first but no water on the site. Out of it, they pulled two pieces of metal. And into it, they sewed three stitches. The doc said I was pretty lucky for a guy who had been leg swept by a trailer hitch. Whatever hit me went right in and came straight out, no doubt due to the force disparity between a skinny white dude and an earth-mover. If it had gone in and moved around a bit, I could have been in a serious hurt.

As to what hit me, my foreman called me up later to inform me that he checked out the trailer and that on one of the bolts holding the trailer jack there sat my flesh. Kind of disgusting. He left it there for me to see in the morning. So, a 1/2 inch-ish head of a lag bolt entered my ankle, struck bone and came out.

It still hurts. Actually, it’s not my ankle that hurts. It’s my calf, which the doc said likely hurts because of the shock of lag bolt nailing the bone with the force of a 9,000+ pound vehicle moving at more than running speed.

Having this happen right after I was shaking my head at the state of things regarding Caution tape, I thought maybe the universe was trying to tell me something. But probably not since it doesn’t talk much.

I could have blogged, but I wrote this instead. See you tomorrow. I do rather wish I took a pic of the bone but I was trying to doctor myself.

Update: And when I got home, Junior made me a plate for dinner and a get well card. She’s awesome.

Posted in Notes to Junior on August 22nd, 2012 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |