CONTENT WARNING: Blood (Minor Injury)
 

During my first pregnancy, we moved to a new apartment and started renovating the kitchen. To paint the walls properly, we wanted to remove the old skirting boards first. Now, not everyone might know this, but even when the stomach stands out and is impossible to miss as you cannot see your own feet, you don’t really feel that it is there. It is difficult to explain, but your motor skills still tell you that your stomach ends where it used to.

Everyone told me to be careful and rest, but I wanted to help. I couldn’t move very well and didn’t have high stamina at the time, but I found that I could help remove the skirting boards. My nesting instincts took over for a while, and I was very adamant about getting things in order, so that is what I did. While we were home (but not currently working on the kitchen), I sat down on the floor and started to carefully loosen the boards from the walls.

Husband: “Be careful now!”

Me: “Don’t worry.”

Husband: “Don’t hurt yourself.”

Me: “It isn’t that hard.”

Not long after I said that, I got to a part that was rather well stuck, but I could feel that with a small, controlled yank, I could get it loose. I was right. The only problem, as explained before, was that I miscalculated the room I had for my “little yank” before yanking the board right into my stomach.

After the yank, everything went quiet as I looked at the blood coming from where the wood had pierced my stomach.

Me: “Oops.”

Husband: “What happened?!”

He yelled and came running.

Me: “I stabbed myself in the stomach.”

Husband: “WHAT?!”

I laughed then. It honestly wasn’t that bad; it had just grazed the surface, but it looked a lot more dramatic since I was, in fact, bleeding. My husband wanted to take me to the hospital, but I calmed him down. It was nowhere near dangerous to the child, and I could feel that all was well in there.

Safe to say, after that, I could only help out when no one was home to stop me. The baby came out alive and well and is now four years old.

DISCLAIMER: This story contains content of a medical nature. It is not intended as medical advice.

Because I’m a klutz, I ended up in an ambulance going to the hospital. (The short version is that I dislocated my shoulder and couldn’t put it back myself.) While we were in the ambulance, the paramedic got my information and then took my vitals. My blood pressure reading came back.

Paramedic: “Huh. Have you ever been told you have high blood pressure?”

Me: “No.”

Paramedic: “Hmm… Well, your blood pressure is reading in the high range of what we consider normal. You probably should talk to your doctor about it.”

I kind of brushed it off because my focus was on my shoulder and telling them that I didn’t need or want drugs. But a couple of days later, I was thinking about it, and I really should have said something like, “Of course, my blood pressure is spiked! My arm is six inches longer than it’s supposed to be, it feels like it weighs an extra 100 pounds, and I’m in an ambulance on the way to the hospital! I’d be surprised if it was low!”

But even my discharge paperwork from the emergency room had a note to the effect of “Your blood pressure was a little high, so you should follow up with your doctor for potential pre-hypertension.” I mean, I get that they want to give people information and everything, but also, let’s put stuff into perspective, people! I might not have been reacting the way a lot of people would, but let’s look at the situation here. 

For the record, when I went to my doctor for a hospital follow-up visit, my blood pressure was normal.

This story reminded me of a sort-of reversal that happened to me.

While in the gym, I sprained my ankle. In the beginning, I ignored it and medicated, but as the pain persisted, on day four of this injury I decided to go to the ER. As I lived alone, was young, and not exactly without means, I decided to call a cab rather than an ambulance or going by foot.

The cab could not get into the ER’s loading bay, obviously, so I had to hobble to the acceptation/patient input desk. The man behind the desk scolded me for waiting four days (which was fair)… and for:

Front Desk: “It was stupid of you to come all the way here by foot instead of calling an ambulance.”

Me: “I came by cab exactly because I knew going by foot was a terrible idea.”

Front Desk: “You still walked several more meters than needed! An ambulance is better.”

Me: “I didn’t want to pay the ‘GOMER Tax’—” *Or, in other words, pay the ambulance for its misuse in picking me up.* “—as I wasn’t otherwise immobilised, let alone at risk of dying! Dozens of other people out there need it more than me.”

He gave me the ID bracelet while still berating me for not wasting hospital resources on picking up my code-white butt from home.

I am not sure whether he was not listening to how I came in, or if he thought a sprained ankle was considered eligible for free ambulance rides like breaking a bone is.

For a number of mundane reasons, I was very small at birth. My mom is still in a postpartum haze but awake enough for first-time-parent anxiety to be in full force. I’m napping in a bassinet at her bedside when a nurse comes in to do a regular check on us both.

After making sure my mom is okay and nothing looks worrying, the nurse turns towards my bassinet and stops dead.

Nurse: *Under her breath.* “Oh my gosh.”

Mom: *Panicking.* “What is it? What’s wrong? Is she okay?!”

The nurse’s voice becomes almost a squeal.

Nurse: “She’s so TINY!”

She apparently continued in this vein during the entire check-up, gushing about how small I was and how there were preemies in the NICU that were bigger than me. This repeated every time she saw my mom before we left the hospital.

If she’d seen me strapped into my infant car seat, arms sticking straight out, hands hidden by my too-long sleeves, with a rolled-up blanket on either side to keep me upright, I think she would’ve exploded.

I recently stayed at a hotel, where conference organisers had booked me into a wheelchair-accessible room. It was round the back of the building down a lane-wide ramp with no sides, handrails, or lighting. Even in a wheelchair, I wouldn’t have been able to get to or from it unless someone was there to push me.

The hotel’s answer was that there was a dedicated disabled parking bay nearby so I could just drive to the front of the building, hope to find suitable parking, and walk across the busy carpark every time I wanted to go to breakfast, reception, the coffee shop, meetings or anywhere.

When I pointed out I didn’t have a car and would need to call a taxi each way to take me from my room to reception and back, I got the obligatory “deer in the headlights” look.

It’s not really the hotel’s fault. Despite it being completely unsuitable for me, who can walk (sort of) and would be on my own without a car most of the time, I believe the room was quite spacious and well-equipped.

The requirement I had asked for was accessible washing and toilet facilities, so I ended up with a smaller and more basic (but still accessible) room, but at least I could make my own way around.

They were also good enough to provide a proper ergonomic computer chair so I could sit in my room and work.

Watching the cogs whirring was fun; I don’t think it had ever occurred to the managers that without a car, or at the very least a fairly meaty powered chair, there was no safe way to go to and from their premium “accessible” rooms.