Another life lesson learned
Having recently realized that it's a bad idea to buy a cookie sheet without measuring your oven, I learned another important thing last night; it's a bad idea to go on a swing with bare feet, because you could very well slam your foot into the ground, dislocating and breaking your pinky toe.This was a stinky night to learn this because I'm off to Montreal tomorrow and will now be hobbling over the cobble stones and because I was having a nice night before that. My grad student friend Mark and I had dinner for our birthdays (his is on the 27th, the same as Thomas') at a bar called Our Place, near my place and his place, so it was apt. (Apparently everyone at BU lives either in Brighton or Allston) We had excellent hamburgers (my rare burger was actually served rare) and watched the Simpsons. We then went for a walk and ended up in the park with the infamous swings. There was a wonderful squishy surface under them, like sidewalk but with a lot of give. When I was a kid, they just had rubber mats under the swings at the playground. So prosaic, although I did love the puzzle-piece joinings keeping the mats together. So we were just swinging and chatting and I kicked off my shoes, since it's just so tempting whenever you're on a swing.
Bad idea. I didn't think that slowing down the swing with bare feet on squishy sidewalk would be a problem -- Fred Flintstone never had foot problems, but he had four toes, and they were just little blobs -- but I was sadly mistaken. I tried to brake and my toes went into the sidewalk, which was just not squishy enough to prevent the little toe of my right foot from getting separated from all the other toes. It was kind of off to the right and very crooked, so I pushed it back to the rest of them, using the squishy sidewalk, after screaming.
Mark is my student, and while we're friends, I also have been advising him about further grad school and stuff and feel like his elder (and maybe a little bit maternal), so I refrained from collapsing in a ball of tears and valiantly made my way out of the park, after a few stops to let the dizziness and nausea pass away. I've had things happen to me that should have been more painful -- breaking my leg and my arm come to mind -- but somehow this, which was relatively minor in the pain department, really threw me for a loop. If anyone ever wanted to torture me, all they'd have to do is break my pinky toe and I'd tell them everything.
While I no longer live near the magnificent Somerville Hospital (which is truly filled with humane and sensible health care professionals), I am just a short cab ride away from Saint Elizabeth's, a well-regarded teaching hospital that specializes in toes. (Had it been a sprained ankle, I would have been out of luck.) I hopped in a cab (get it, hopped?) deposited myself in the emergency room and proceeded to wait for hours for someone to see me. They actually put me on a stretcher in the hallway, which I thought was a news story cliche (are overcrowded emergency rooms killing people? Full story at 10!), but apparently really happens.
Luckily I had a really good book with me -- The Judgement of Paris, about the annual government-sponsored Paris art salons in the 1860s and 70s and how taste changed from heroic idealist paintings to impressionism. Barbara and Richard lent it to me, and the author is great at telling a story with lots of facts but making it flow in an interesting way. Also, it's nice to read a book with very little religion in it.
Still, no emergency room is fun to spend time in, and by 11:30, I had had enough. (I had gotten there at 8:45.) I mean, they didn't even give me an ice pack. So I went to the desk to tell them I was leaving, which lit a fire under their toe-underestimating butts, and I then got xrays and a doctor to check me out by 12.
They say I don't need a cast or a cane or anything; I just have to tape my toes together, but given the cursory examination they gave my foot, I'm not sure I believe them, those minor-problem-disregarding bastards. Take my pain seriously, dammit! God knows I do.
I'll post more about my many birthday festivities, probably when we get back from Montreal.
A bientot! Vive la Crust!
posted by Gina @ 1:00 AM
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