Another weekend, another ER visit

Today's trouble started when I decided to go outside and tackle some of the thornier landscaping issues around my house -- a dead bush with a tree going up through it in the front yard, a massive weed tree growing up through a fence in the side yard, and a tree in need of pruning. I spent several hours this morning digging and cutting. I was almost done when I put my foot into some tall grass and discovered a board with four nails sticking out of it, thoughtfully left by the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none handyman my landlord keeps sending out. And when I say discovered, I mean that one of the nails penetrated my ratty tennis show and embedded itself into my foot.

After saying a few things that probably shouldn't be repeated in public, I removed the board, quickly tidied up my brush piles, and headed inside to ponder when I had last had a tetanus shot. Unfortunately, the last shot appears to have been while I was still riding a yellow bus to school every morning. Given that a booster is recommended every 10 years (more often if you routinely get stabbed by rusty nails), I figured it was probably about time. So I called the Blue Cross nurse, who once againt directed me to head straight to the ER. (One more visit and I'm eligible for the shopper rewards program!)

There wasn't actually that much pain involved initially, so I dawdled a bit before moseying into the familiar ol'B Baptist ER around 3:00. I then spent several an hour or two there, and was eventually sent home with a tetanus shot in my arm and a bottle of 40 pretty little red pills to take over the next 10 days. The moral of this story? Yard work is a bad idea.

Oh, yeah, and I almost forgot the incident on Thursday wherein my hand got stuck in a malfunctioning elevator door at work! No hospitalization on that one, although it seems like there easily could have been if the elevator had started moving.

I'm not sure I've felt this accident prone since the holiday weekend at a friend's cabin a few years ago when I sliced my scalp open and tore off a toenail in a two-day period. (Amazingly there was no hospitalization then, but only because we had our very own med student along and the nearest hospital was an hour drive.)