Whether I'm trying my best to not fall off an Icelandic glacier, or standing in an ice-cold stream in Austria, or watching a lioness snack on a zebra on the African plains, or (more often) just sitting at my desk overhearing 16-year-old girl gossip, every day's a holly-day for me.

Monday, August 9, 2010

THE DUMBEST THING I'VE EVER DONE

Well, maybe not EVER, but certainly in a very long time. The DUMBEST thing I've EVER done surely involved a man, but that's fodder for a much different blog. Why I am blogging about this particular event for public consumption is beyond me. And why I am blogging about it for public consumption when I have to be at work in less than six hours and I needed to be asleep four hours ago is really beyond me and bordering on just plain stupid. But not as stupid as what I was doing 24 hours ago.

At this time last night, I was driving myself home from the St. Luke's "satellite" ER. Basically, it's a minor emergency center on steroids. When this place was being built, I made a note to self, thinking how handy it would be to have a such a place a mere 45 seconds from my home. That note to self never even came close to including, "because you might need to go there when you accidentally put your eye out with a resistance band while trying to do p90x at midnight on a Saturday night." But that's what happened.

I know, I know...so many questions just entered your brain as you try to visualize what you just read, probably first and foremost being "YOU'RE doing P90X?!!? HAAAAAAA!!" Yes, I started doing P90X five days ago. The Day 5 workout, which I was doing at 11:30 pm on a SATURDAY NIGHT (which prompts a myriad of further questions that I really don't want to discuss), consists of torturing one's legs and BACK. Tony Horton, the evil dictator who
created this ridiculous program, seems to think that the quickest way to a strong back is by doing pull ups. I am 39. I am female. I am one of the least coordinated and therefore, least athletic, humans I know...ergo, I can't do a pull up. Hitler suggests that wimps like me can instead use a resistance band until we are ripped enough to do a pull up. I am estimating I will be doing pull ups by September 15, 20never, but until then, I need to use the band. Sooooo...I found a doorway close enough to my TV that I could still see and hear Mussolini screaming at me to "GET THAT CHIN OVER THE BAR" and proceeded to tie a knot in the resistance band (so it would be tighter) and then throw said weapon - I mean resistance band - over the door. My plan was to close the door on the band so the knot was on one side and I on the other and then pull down on the band instead of pulling my body up over a bar. That's actually how the perky girl in the DVD who also uses bands does it....except hers isn't thrown over a door. And it doesn't have a knot in it. Regardless, I got on my knees so I would have to pull further and harder and proceeded to stretch the band towards my head in a wide grip, just as Stalin instructed me to. JUST as the band was pulled as tightly as it possibly could be, the door opened just enough to let my "safety knot" through and said knot came flying at my face at full speed and hit me directly in my OPEN eyeball. I basically popped myself in the eyeball with a six foot long, two inch wide rubber band that was tied in a knot and pulled as tightly as it could be without breaking. To say this "hurt" is terribly insulting to the English language. There are really no words.

I am not positive, but I think I blacked out for a moment or two. Then I saw stars and got tunnel vision and felt nauseous and saw white lights and knew that I was either dead or having a near death experience. OR that I was dreaming that I was at that Pink Floyd laser light thing that I saw at some planetarium when I was a kid. I knew I must be alive when I heard a voice repeatedly saying "oh my God, oh my God" and realized it was mine. I laid on my hardwood floor for about three minutes fighting off the urge to vomit, then began wondering if I was going to have to call an ambulance. I staggered to my water bottle, took a sip and collapsed on the couch, begging God to miraculously and spontaneously turn off my DVD player so I wouldn't have to hear Mao Tse-Tung screaming at me about why I was on my couch instead of doing wall squats. I managed to push pause and get to the kitchen for an ice pack. I slumped over the counter with the pack on my face for about five minutes before working up the courage to go look at my face. I was pretty sure my eyeball was going to be dangling out of the socket. Luckily, it was still in place, but definitely swelling and definitely red. My cheek was bleeding and there was a very dark red spot of what looked like blood smack dab on my iris. And I pretty much couldn't see a damn thing out of my right eye. I spent the next ten minutes digging my contact out of my eye, making the whole situation SO much better, I'm sure.

After another hour or so and several tearful phone calls to a few loved ones that were nice enough to take my call at 12:30 and give me their opinions on the odds of me being permanently blind, I decided I was going to be OK. However, just as I was heading to bed with an ice pack and ibuprofen in hand, my vision got suddenly worse. I looked in the mirror and the blood spot in my eye was completely gone. I thought that was a good thing for about 2.2 seconds until it occurred to me that the blood had to have gone somewhere and that it was perhaps hemorrhaging into my brain. This cheery thought, coupled with the fact that trying to see with my right eye felt like I was looking through an inch of Vaseline, prompted me to drive the 45 seconds - yes, with my right eye closed - to the shiny new ER near my house just to make sure I wasn't going to go blind and/or die of a blood clot in the brain.

A couple hundred bucks, two prescriptions and an hour later, I was home in bed. The nurses and doctor questioned my reason for exercising so late, asked if "anyone was with me when the accident occurred" (probably code for "do you seriously think we believe this ridiculous story? Are you sure you're not a battered wife?"), checked me out and assured me I would be back to my 20/40 - with correction -  vision in no time. And they were right. I am pretty much back to normal, save a pounding headache. I even finished the workout with Pol Pot today. But you can be sure there were no resistance bands involved. Or pull ups.