The View From Wisconsin

Ever have one of those days, when nothing seemed to go right?

Today was one of those.

First of all, our little fur child Brookie had to go to the vet for a follow-up booster shot. She hisses a bit, a little more than usual, but we get out without too much difficulty. As I'm paying, Sarah is trying to get her out the door of the vet's office. Brooke squirms, and Sarah unintentionally squeezes her right where she just got the shot.

CHOMP.

Right on her left hand. Actually drew some blood, got some really nice marks. She went and cleaned up while I got Brooke to the car. No problem at first, but then by that afternoon when I got up, her hand was swollen and puffy.

So we went over to the Aurora Health Care Urgent Care - and discovered they closed at 3:30. Plan B: call the doctor's answering service and head towards Waukesha Memorial Hospital. Doctor gives us a call back, tells us go to the ER.

Sarah gets her hand checked out - turns out she needed both a tetanus shot and some antibiotics. While she's getting her hand x-rayed (preventative medicine), I decide I'm in no shape to go to work so I step outside to use my cell to call in sick. I come back in, get a coffee from their cheapo vending machine and wait til I can go back inside.

That was when some father with his kids tried to get a bag of chips out of a vending machine there in the waiting area. The bag got stuck at the top, and a security guard was trying to get the thing down by shaking the machine.

I offered to help by giving it a good body check with the shoulder.

BAD IDEA.

I was mostly in shock after the glass came raining down on me. I have all sorts of cuts on my fingers, a small cut on my nose and even a little cut on my right ear - all from flying shards of glass. If you've ever seen it at a hockey game, when a player gets checked against the boards and the glass shatters - that's what it was like. They had to literally vacuum me down to get all the shards off of my sweatshirt.

So, while Sarah's getting her shot and getting antibiotics, I'm sitting there in the intake, embarrassed as hell, my hand hurting like hell, and bleeding with cuts on both hands. And guess who else now had to get a tetanus shot?

So we end up spending more time at the ER than intended - and a nice hefty $60 (PER PERSON) co-pay for the visit. And I end up with one of the top-ten most embarrassing moments in my life.

Shown above at right is a photo of the damages. Notice that they had to break out every single "CAUTION WET FLOOR" sign in the building.

I really hope the kid enjoyed his bleeping potato chips.