Sunday, March 15, 2009

4 stitches in my head

We were at Winterfest this weekend in Knoxville, TN. It was cold and rainy. We parked in the back of a building downtown and were walking around the front to eat. The sidewalk was wet , I stepped wrong on a metal strip, slipped and fell head first into a metal meter that was hanging on the side of the building.

When I first hit my head I just thought, man that hurt and I stood there for a minute holding my head. Travis came up and put his hand over my head and told me it was bleeding. He walked me in the restaurant to the bathroom. At this point he pulled his hand off and I could see just how much blood there was on his hand. I had a head injury when I was 5 and I remember... heads bleed. They are very vascular and a small nick can produce a lot of blood. Still, if you know me you know I am NOT a fan of seeing my own blood. Travis kept switching out the paper towels and throwing the bloody ones away.

Seeing this I knew I needed to lay down or I was going to pass out. So I went out of the bathroom and laid down on the floor of the restaurant. Yuck yuck. I hate germs but in the moment that doesn't matter. The first thing I remember saying after I laid down was "I'm not missing the band play tonight."

There was a nice doctor that happened to be in the restaurant who came over and looked at my head while I was laying on the ground. He said he thought I would need stitches and that my reaction of needing to lay down was normal. Somewhere in all this confusion someone called for an ambulance. I guess that was a good thing because the band (The Saturn Project) was with us and we all drove together. They had a sound check within the hour and needed the van we rode in.

So I got a state of the art ride in an ambulance to the nearest hospital. Had we been at Homestead Hospital it would have taken like 8 hours for some stitches. These guys were much faster. Which is good because I was not joking about not missing the band. I had to get a tetanus shot and 4 stitches right above my hair line. That was not fun. It didn't get totally numbed and I could feel him stitch it up but I told him to just hurry and finish because I didn't want more local anesthesia in my head.

I made it to see the band and they rocked it. Luckily I can just flip my hair over and you can't even see that anything is wrong so no one really knew what happened unless they had gotten Travis' twitter, LOL. Here are some pictures of them last night...
My head still hurts today. I feel a little beat up and nauseous, but I'm good. I'm in Cleveland, TN tonight and looking forward to laying in bed all night long and hopefully feeling 100% tomorrow. I am not looking forward to washing my hair tomorrow, but I have to! TSP plays Tuesday morning at Lee University Chapel and Wednesday night at PKP's St. Patty's Day Bash. After that we head to Lake City to scoop up the kids from my parents. I miss them like crazy.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

YES we talked about your battle scar this morning at LPC Homestead. We're all glad that it wasn't a show-stopper and that you'll be back to normal again after the splitting headache runs its course.

Get back home safely later this week !

Anonymous said...

I am SO SORRY about your fall and the whole bloody experience. I remember the first time as a child you reacted to a cut you had. You turned as pale as could be and I had to put a cold cloth on your face to help you get through it. From that point on the sight of blood (or sometimes just the thought) made you feel queasy. I'm SO GLAD Travis was there to be your Knight in Shining Armor through this ordeal. THE KIDS ARE GREAT, and I'm enjoying taking care of them. Thanks for sharing them with their Grammy.

Anonymous said...

You are a tough cookie, Miss Kelly.

We are all missing you guys, get back home safe and sound:)

Ela