Head Trauma
Mood:  caffeinated
we're back from wild, wonderful, west virginia...mostly the weekend was relaxing; hiking around in the unseasonably warm weather, and e didn't have all that much work to do. mostly he just had to check in on the crew twice a day. so we got to hang out together. i hear that some married people do that fairly often...strange.

the most eventful part of the trip was the first five minutes after arriving in west virginny. we stopped at a bp so that e could call ray and arrange to meet. while e was doing that, i figured that i would pop into the bp to use the ladies room and get some gum, since we would then be driving around the site for a couple hours...did i mention that it was pretty much a blizzard up there? it was sooo windy and the snow was blowing everywhere.

on my way back to the car, my boot slipped on the ice and i landed face first on the hard parking lot, broke my glasses, and was covered in blood. e, thinking that i'd just slipped and landed on my butt, hopped out of the car to help me up, only to find me shrieking and holding my bloody head. since i broke my glasses, and my eye was covered in blood, when e said "it's bad," i thought that perhaps my eye had popped out. luckily this wasn't the case. it hurt so badly and there was so much blood, i thought that i had some sort of severe head trauma and insisted on going to see a doctor. to which e calmly responded, was not all that easy to do in darkest west virginia. apparantly the nearest medical attention was 15 minutes away. after he assured me that there wasn't a gaping hole in my head, i agreed to the drive and held some tissues to my bloody head, feeling nausiated and refusing to look at the injury, all the way.

happily, e's memory was correct, there WAS a clinic in davis...but they didn't open until 11am, and it was now 930. luckily it was right next to a pharmacy, where we were able to purchase some band-aids, neosporin and tylenol...which i realized that i actually had some of in my purse already...stupid head injury! the people there were very nice and helped me find things, since e went outside to take a call from ray (reception is terribly out in the woods and they'd been trying to connect for over an hour), and my glasses were brokent, so i couldn't see anything. the girl was very nice to let me follow her around the store and hand things to me.

e thought that it might make me feel better to actually LOOK at what he now described as a tiny scratch, which was infuriating, since it hurt like a *&&^%, "how can it be that small?! it's bleeding like a bad bruce campbell movie over here!" but i gave in and looked in the mirror...he was right. the spurty, horror movie blood was coming out of a cut that was MAYBE a half inch long. amazing. terrifying. anywho...since we couldn't get in to see a doctor for awhile anyway, we went to meet ray and get a tour of the site...i was not thrilled about this, as my head was aching all the way and i was still a little slow and confused...oh, and the site is boring. but at least i had some pain killers and a band-aid. and e had cleaned me up with some water and napkins from our burger king brekky...later i would regret that, as the oil from the napkins caused me to break out a couple days later.

after an interminably long time, we were finally on our way to the condo, where i could put my contacts in, so that i could see. and then see the doctor. happily i was able to get in really quickly, even though i was assured that it would "be awhile." west virginia time is just different than regular time. and the doc said that i didn't need stitches. he shot me up with some lydacane, which was LOVELY (after the pain of the needles peircing the side of the owey subsided) and fixed me up with a compression bandage to help it heal nicely to minimalize scarring. he was most certainly a small town doctor - he had to run around all up and down the hall to get all the supplies he needed to fix me up. after i was all patched up, i felt much better, aside from my aching head, of course...the rest of the weekend, women would look at e as if to say "you bastard, why'd you hit the pretty little girl?" one girl even asked him...he didn't care for it.

i'm gonna knock you out,
jwm