Well, I have descended to a New Low in my Drinking Adventures. Last Friday I injured myself significantly.
I was doing fine, drinking my typical 7-Up and vodka, watching the NCAA Tournament with my brother, his fiancé, and Patrick. Suddenly Patrick busted out the bottle of Fireball out and everybody started doing shots. (Fireball is a truly Satanic liqueur.) Of course the first thing I did was encourage them to do even more, and the next thing I did was encourage them to do the shots more frequently. Before I knew it I was “blackout drunk” and I remembered very little of what happened the next day.
I do remember taking a tumble in the yard. I don’t remember how I fell, but I remember where. I landed on my face right next to the backyard fence. I don’t know why I went out there in the first place, though. Patrick says I let the dogs out, and then just sort of wandered out there on my own. I also distinctly remember being unable to stand. I just sort of laid there weakly, rolling back and forth on my sides, softly muttering “Help…” to people who couldn’t hear me. In a few minutes Patrick came to check on the open back door and saw me lying there. “Come help me, brah,” I said.
Patrick eventually got me up and into the house, and up the first flight of stairs to the ground floor, on his own. But after that, I was rendered “legless” as the Brits say, and made no effort at all to walk or stand. It took a combined effort of my brother, his woman, and Patrick to get me the rest of the way to my bed. I collapsed and fell asleep almost instantly.
When I woke up in the middle of the night, my legs were in intense pain. I had a burning sensation in my left leg, and my right foot hurt intensely whenever I put pressure on it. I knew something bad wrong had happened, but I was too semi-unconscious to deal with it at the moment.
I woke up the next day to the sound of my phone ringing. My brother’s fiancé was calling me on his phone. They encouraged me to come downstairs to spend time with them, but I said my foot hurt too much due to my fall. When my Brother saw my injury, he said, “It can’t be too badly hurt, he’s putting his full weight on it.”
“Oh my God, look at his left leg!” the fiancé said. “It’s covered in scrapes and scratches!” They examined my foot and while it was swollen and warm to the touch, there was no bruising. “It’s not broken then,” brother said confidently, “otherwise there would be a ton of bruising.”
I read a little bit about caring for an injured foot and started the routine of R.I.C.E. – rest, ice, compression, and elevation. I didn’t do a good job of it though. For example, I still sat at my computer for most of my waking hours, and I probably didn’t ice my foot down enough. As for compression, I had to rely on a sock or a shoe to keep pressure on it, since I don’t own an elastic bandage or anything like that. All in all, pretty shoddy care.
The bruising showed up on Monday. I put ice on the foot, as usual, but with significantly less insulation from the actual cubes than before. When I removed the makeshift ice pack about 10 minutes later, there was horrible bruising all along the base of my toes. I immediately texted the pic to my brother and he said “Yep, that looks like it could be broken.”
Now that the pain is much worse, and the bruising continues to expand, I think I need to go to the doctor. I was going to go to the E.R., but Delbert sort of talked me out of that by saying, “If you can walk on it, it’s not an emergency! Go to your regular doctor.” Which is what I suppose I’ll do. My brother is going there tomorrow, so I’ll just ride along with him. I hope something can be done to help it.
Needless to say, I feel incredibly stupid that I caused myself this injury by getting too drunk for my own good. It gives me yet another reason to swear off the alcohol, not that I’ll pay attention.