If It Ain't Broke...

So we moved.  Did I mention that was happening?  I might have, I don't know.  

Yeah, last Saturday we handed in our keys to the Studio City place, drove for five hours,  and picked up the keys to the SunnyHappySuburb place.  

I have a ton of things I want to talk about.  Pictures of our drive up north to share, pictures of our new house, a tirade on being caught up in a real-life, face-to-face Stay-at-Home versus Work-Out-of-the-Home argument on my very last night in Los Angeles (could I think of about eleventy billion ways I'd rather have spent my last night there?  Why, yes, indeed, I could!), stories about how stinking cute Ethan has been since we got up here and of course, I could always go on and on fretting about how I'm terrified by the prospect of having to make new friends and build a new life here. 

But I can't do any of those things this evening, my friends.  Because I am hopped up on Vicodin.  

Why am I hopped up on narcotics, you ask?  Excellent question. 

At about 5pm on Sunday, after several hours of watching the two-man moving team lug all our earthly belongings into our new house, I was chomping at the bit to get into those boxes.  I like to imagine that even though it took a month to pack, I can have this place looking like something out of the pages of House Beautiful in a matter of mere days.  Delusions, I know.  But to that end, I dove into the boxes the men had piled in the kitchen.  

Unpacking is a lot like going shopping for free.  Rediscovering your stuff in a new place, digging through the packing paper to find the treasure hidden beneath it, being reminded of how pretty your china is as it emerges from the packing materials (even if you only use it once a year), trying to figure out where all of this stuff goes in its new home--all of this is very enjoyable for me.  

What's NOT so enjoyable for me is when one of my fancy (urm, Target) plate chargers slips from the packing paper and falls, edge first, onto my big toe at the very base of my toenail.  No, actually, that is the polar exact opposite of enjoyable.  It may even be one of Dante's circles of hell.  There is nothing quite like watching your toenail turn black in front of your very eyes to make the contents of your stomach turn to pure water.  

Husband and Ethan were out at the time, and I tried to keep my screaming of obscenities to an absolute bare minimum as we'd just met our neighbors as they were returning home from Church and I am under the impression that Church is a very big part of their lives--did NOT want to tarnish their impression of me with a string of SONOFABITCH! WHATTHEFUCKWASTHAT??!! OHMYFUCKINGG-D, MYFUCKINGTOE!!!!!!"s wafting through our open windows and making their three kids' ears bleed.  

I held my toe and rocked back and forth on the floor, wondering if this was some kind of divine retribution for not attending Kol Nidre services.  Given the fact that only an hour earlier, Husband had walloped me in the skull with the side of a train table he was constructing, leaving me with a throbbing goose-egg, it seemed reasonable to think that I was indeed being punished with all manner of minor injuries for opting to unpack train tables and holiday plating instead of atoning for my year's worth of sins in synagogue.   

Over the next 24 hours I did a lot of icing and elevating and moaning and groaning every time the throbbing kicked in.  I buddy-taped my big toe to the toe next to it, at the suggestion of Facebook friends.   And of course there was the internal-organ shut-down inducing doses of Advil I was administering to myself.  

When Husband returned home last night, I decided I had to make sure I wasn't hobbling around on a busted digit.  While I'll never compete in a triathalon, I have sincere intentions of getting my act (and ass) gear and joining a gym up here, getting on the treadmill and transforming my frump-ass.  A broken toe that heals wonkily could put a big kink in that plan.  Fine.  So I've been here for 48 hours--time to check out the local Urgent Care facilities!

I drove myself, leaving Husband and E at home--last thing I need two days before Ethan starts his new preschool is bringing him someplace where exposure to the swine flu is an almost 100% guarantee.  There was, as there always is in an urgent care/ER situation, much waiting in the waiting room.  And then much waiting in the exam room.  

(let me take a second to apologize for any typos or general "what the hell is she talking about??-ness" from here on in.  The vicodin has taken effect.  Wow. )

I took this picture while waiting for the tiny little doctor man to come in: 

and really? This picture does not even come close to conveying the gross discoloration and throbby, swelling grossness of it all.  But I'll tell ya what--it looks WAY worse now.  

Why, you ask?  Oh, I'll tell you, but I won't show you because I love you too much to do that to you (also it's wrapped up under a metric ton of gauze tape right now so I can't get a picture).  

First, tiny little doctor man wanted an x-ray of the toe to make sure it wasn't broken.  An orderly wheeled me down to the x-ray room and the rollicking good time of "Are you or might you be pregnant?" game ensued.  Um.  How do you answer that question when you've been having unprotected sex for almost two years and not managed to get pregnant once in that time?  Well.  I "might" be pregnant, but it's about as likely as me being able to do long division in my head (read: VERY unlikely).  I tried to explain the situation to the orderly (this is where I start sounding like Julia Louis-Dryfus in Old Christine--sharing too much, knowing I'm sharing too much, unable to stop sharing too much---I'm really good at that), and he ends up saying that he can't let me have an x-ray without having taken a pregnancy test first.  Awesome.  

So fine.  There's a cup, and a restroom, and I go sit down in my exam room again.  Of course inside my stupid little pea brain there is the glimmer of a fantasy that I go home and tell Husband I dont' know if my toe is broken because OMG, HONEY, I'M PREGNANT SO THEY COULDNT' DO AN X-RAY AND WE'RE HAVING A BAAAAAAAABY!!!" Of course.   And then, ten minutes later I hear the orderly hollaring to little tiny doctor man, "That pregnancy test was negative!!" across the nurses' station.  Of course. 

So tactless orderly wheels me back down to the x-ray room, tells me to get on the table and then asks in all sincerity, "would it hurt your toe a lot if I taped it down right here?"  UM.  YEAH!!! Yeah, dude, that would EFFING HURT!!! Know why?! Because that's why I'm here!! My toe hurts with a blinding pain--your touching it would definitely make it HURT!!! GAH!

I did let him tape back my other toes so he could better see my big toe with the giant radiation machine.  Zip zap zap.  

Little tiny doctor man returns to my exam room moments later to announce the good news that my toe is not fractured and that all he has to do to make it feel better is poke a small hole in the nail to relieve the pressure of the built-up blood underneath.  

Erm.  I'm sorry--did you say poke a hole in my toe nail?  Like, down to the nail bed?  With a metal hook?  I didn't know whether to puke or pass out.  On the other hand, if you told me that cutting my hand off would have made the pain in my toe stop, I might have considered it.  

Next thing I knew, tactless orderly was holding my leg still while tiny little doctor man sprayed some sort of icy numbing stuff all over my foot.  You know when you're icing a sprained ankle and the ice is so torturously cold it feels like it's burning?  Yeah, it was like that on crack.   Initially I thought it was silly for the orderly to hold my leg down--I mean, I've had needles stuck in my spine and my stomach cut open and a baby ripped out.  The "gross" factor of a metal hook in my toenail was pretty much off the charts, but I didn't expect the pain of it to be anything I couldn't handle.  

Well, good thing for tactless orderly because if he hadn't been there holding my foot down, little tiny doctor man would be walking today with his nose stuffed with packing, my urge to kick him in the head was that strong. 

After the foot-freezing torture was over, I expected a quick needle-like poke and for it to all be over.  What I got instead was a momentary flash of bright orange light and a "woooooosh!!!" sound that filled the exam room.  Um.  Why was the room on fire??  WHY is the room fucking on fire???!!!! 

There was much flailing around on the part of LTDM and TO (I cannot type those names out again, people).  I think TO's armhair might have been singed.  Fortunately, the flame burnt itself out almost instantly--like a dessert flambe, only the dessert was my toe.   I didn't get burned at all, but was FA-REAKED out beyond pretty much any description at that point.  And my toe still really really hurt. 

LTDM thought the impromptu blaze was hilarious and said, "oh yes, that sometimes happens when the metal hook hits the freezing solution--it makes a spark and POOF! up it goes! ha ha!" I just stared at him, every fiber of my being screaming, "Get off the exam table and hobble the hell out of there!!!! He just almost set you on fire!!! What is he, Dr Nick from the freaking Simpsons???!!"   

Perhaps I should have listened to my gut because moments later, TO (smelling like singed arm hair) was holding my foot down yet again and LTDM was gouging at my poor sad toenail with the metal hook and squeezing my toe like he was trying to pop the most giant and disgusting zit you've ever seen, in an attempt to make it bleed and relieve the pressure under the nail.   And guess what?  Nothing came out.  Apparently I waited too long to go to urgent care and anything that could have drained out had long since clotted and I am now stuck with it for the duration.   And?  I now have a giant hole in my toe nail.  I'll tell you, THAT feels awesome, too. 

So you know.  Nothing much going on here.  Just your run of the mill moving-in stuff.