So anyway…

Okay. So I’m sitting here at about 11:15 pm, mucking around with the gallery script (which, I’m happy to report, I figured out and managed to fix). Andrew stepped on something (a plastic pointy thing that wasn’t supposed to be on the floor) and shouted OUCH. He then saw that his foot was bleeding and went to clean it. He called me to have a look.

Not good. Cut is pretty damned deep, and it’s right in the middle of the bottom of his foot, in a place that definitely won’t stay shut to heal unless it’s stitched. I told Andrew this. He protested. I explained about the reason one gets stitches. I then got him to sit down and I showed him just how deep it was. It went through all the layers of epidermis. Definitely needed stitches (one, but possibly up to three, I’d guess). Also, a cut that deep presents a tetanus risk, so he’ll need a tetanus shot, and possibly some sort of antibiotic ointment (I dunno if that’ll be needed; it depends on how the doctor handles these things, but a foot tends to be pretty dirty, hot, sweaty, and generally creates the perfect place for bacteria to grow.)

Thankfully, this was his left foot, and our car is an automatic. Kids are sleeping (one is, the other is supposed to be), so I said, “You can drive with the right foot, should be okay. Take yourself to the emergency room.” Now, if it were normal business hours, or if there was a late night or 24 hour medical clinic around here, I’d have said to go there and skip the hospital (note: it is a very good ER, and I know this because I’ve had to go there myself, but still, better to go to a doctor when you can and avoid the hospital). However, it’s nearly midnight by now, and there’s nothing available other than the emergency room of the relatively nearby hospital, so that’s where he went.

We cleaned and bandaged the foot up, he took a book, he wore thong sandals instead of his usual heavy duty hiking style shoes, and off he went.

I came back to the computer and resumed working on the gallery and the template. I’m not especially upset by any of this, it’s just a rather deep cut in an unfortunate place, plus whole the tetanus/bacteria issue. I idly start to Twitter about it, because, well, you know, I’m a geek.

Then a talk window pops up and it’s Greg, my husband’s brother. He recently came back from living overseas and he’s staying with Andrew’s mum and dad. Greg says, “Do you want me to come drive Andrew to the hospital?” I think, “Wow, news travels fast…” He was using the computer and was logged in to Facebook, and my Twitter feed autoposts to Facebook. He mentioned it to Mum, she wanted to know what happened and, more to the point, why I didn’t call.

Well, it’s the middle of the night, it wasn’t that serious (more annoying than anything), and, to be honest, we’ve been on our own for months while the in-laws were on an extended tour of Europe and Greg was living in the UK, and we’ve pretty much gotten self-sufficient, and errr, I didn’t even think of it, especially when Andrew was okay to drive himself.

So, now, of course, due to Greg being at tattletale, I’m never going to live this down. It’s going to be a family joke forever, I just know it. “Oh, sure, Andrew needs to go to the emergency room and instead of notifying people properly by telephone like a normal person, you’re Facebooking it!”

Gotta love the net….

[UPDATE: The Ongoing Saga of Andrew's Foot]