This Friday was not my favorite

I haven't planted my face on a hard surface since I was a kid. So it was shock to find myself communing up close and personal with the unforgiving floor of the racquetball court today.

I lay still for several seconds, trying to figure out whether I'd broken my nose or anything else. Then I felt the blood dripping onto the floor. A rather large puddle of perfectly red blood. Nice shade -- the color really "popped" against the light wood of the court floor.

Nice to know I'm healthy and can still see a good color match when it's presented to me.

Anyhoo . . . back to my injury.

At the time I careened off the wall and smacked the floor, my fellow players made a few jokes. Eventually they realized that maybe I needed help. By this time I had my wits about me again and realized that sitting up would put a whole lot of blood on my clothing, so I lay there until Sue returned with a towel.  I held the fabric to my face, putting pressure on my nose, thinking that was where the blood was coming from.

Well, it was coming from my nose. Somewhat.

But worse, and what I didn't know right then, was the gash under my chin. With blood still leaking from under the towel, Sue finally asked to see my chin. "Stitches," she said.

Ooooooo-kay.

Stitches it would be then.

Rhonda drove me to the Urgent Care after collecting my daughter, Abbi (#4), from the training room upstairs in the health club.

I was taken right in and I was doing okay with the whole thing until the doctor mentioned that he could see the bone through the gash. THAT freaked me out and I asked for Rhonda and Abbi to come in and hang out with me (ever the maternal sort, I first checked with my daughter to be sure she'd be okay seeing her mother being stitched up).

The doctor numbed my chin with several little shots of local anesthesia, cleaned the wound deeply, and then began the stitching. Two internal stitches and, ultimately, 6 external stitches.  Feeling the tug of my skin as he stitched was somewhat uncomfortable, but I had only one moment of true pain - and even that wasn't all that awful.

He sent me on my way with a tetanus shot, clean x-rays of the jaw bone, a large bandaid over the stitches, and instructions for care through the coming seven days,. An hour later I was back, though -- the wound had suddenly bled through the bandaid and was dripping. Off came the first bandaid and on went the mummy bandage -- the one that is a wad of gauze taped from ear to ear so it will stay on and give the wound some pressure for a few hours.

Hence my daughter's new nickname for me: Mommy Mummy.

I am supposed to have a purple face by tomorrow. I can hardly wait.

- Catherine