Anterior Tibial Blues

To say that my day sucked yesterday would be serving as a great discredit to everything else sucking. During my normal shitty-ass suck hole of a day, I also somehow managed to wind up at the local Hotel Dieu hospital as the result of my walking to the nearby shop for a $2.00 hot dog.

I’m not sure how it happened exactly. One moment I was happily leaving the building, free from the horseshit for a few moments to revel in the beautiful weather outside, thoughtlessly crossing the company parking when I happened to notice a particular trippy-ass bug climbing along the side of the dumpster, when I also managed to clumsily turn over on my right ankle suddenly and thereby tearing the ligaments in my right foot badly.

Great! I was taken out by an oddly colored insect - not exactly a tale to evoke much sympathy with the ladies is it? Unfortunately, my initial attempts to cover up my clumsy folly with an elaborate yarn of heroics involving my rescuing of a basket of kittens from a nearby flaming building were not met with much enthusiasm or belief. Damn skeptical broads!

What can I say? I’m no ballet dancer. I have all the graceful poise and balance of a drunken water buffalo.

So, as a result, I was required by my work managers to make a pilgrimmage to the hospital to have my foot checked out properly. Swell.

Now normally, with the regular office environment that I currently work in, spending the afternoon in the lobby at the local hospital Emergency Room seems inviting and a welcome option in comparison, but for the stumbling and getting injured while inspecting bugs at the dumpster – I think I’d like to let this little tragedy slip by undetected and unnoticed. I don’t relish relating this particular unmanly accident report to the admitting nurses.

I already know how to handle these kinds of sudden inconvenient accidental injuries: a pillow, some tensor bandage, a bottle of Crown Royal, some strong opiates, and maybe a little Wilco on the stereo.

Certainly I don’t need some pansy-ass Emergency doctor poking at my tender tootsie, only to inform me that I have stretched out the anterior tibial muscle from the top of my foot – the searing white hot twangs of pain in that area already alerts to that, thank you very much!

Just give me my Tylenol 3’s and fuck off.

At first, to avoid the trip to the hospital, I initially panhandled from my fellow co-workers fistfuls of Tylenol, Aspirin, Motrin, Ibuprofen, and Valium from their secret stashes. By the time it dawned on me that perhaps my injury was a bit more serious and I really should really seek out medical assistance, I was lit up like a Christmas tree and didn’t care so much that my right foot had swelled up to the size of a ripe melon - or the fact that I was halucinating that my foot was trying to teach me quantum mathematics.

So what did the doctor do? First he poked at it, then told me I had stretched my anterior tibial muscle, then prescribed me some Tylenol 3’s and told me to fuck off - just like I had predicted. Like clockwork.

So today, I'm home gobbling down the Tylenol 3's like Pez candies and tripping the light fantastique on my couch with a bowl of chilled grapes and Wilco on the stereo. I am still in a lot of pain, but at least I'm drunk and stoned enough to not care so much.

Thanks OHIP (Ontario Hospial Insurance Program)! I love the healing process.