a cautionary tale pt. II

I'm warning you right now - several times in this post resides a place where you'll find yourself thinking, too much information.

If you are a teenaged girl, then perhaps you'll find yourself thinking, TMI

With that cautionary caveat, I'm proceeding with the second movement of my bike accident drama.

The open wounds were easily the most visible ailment - but the real kick in the pants was the stiff neck. Man, you don't realize how much you need your neck until you are in bed, moving like you've got metal screws fastening your neck to your shoulders. I was very stiff.

One thing that has been kind of a pain in the butt is that my wounds aren't in good places, to heal. My elbow constantly bumps into things, and when it does it stings like the DICKENS!

My shoulder healing has been stifled by the conventional more of wearing clothes. I can only imagine if I were a nudist, or at least permitted to walk around shirtless I'd be on healed-wound easy street. Be that as it may, my shoulder wound gets agitated by clothing, and thus sticks to, and is otherwise irritated by my shirts. Many of my undershirts have blood stains on them. Its gross.

Weak stomach, should I keep going? Ok... brace yourself...

This has also posed problems for the white sheets on our bed. A week of sleeping on our sheets with my wound made it look like Ashley butchered her husband in bed. Ok, it's not that bad, but still, it's unpleasant.

As a result - because Ashley being a very thoughtful wife - she went out of her way to buy me all sorts of adhesive bandages in hopes that it could spare our sheets some staining, as well as expedite my healing process. She bought two boxes, sheer, and antibiotic!

Ashely is a big fan of neosporin and other anti-infection cremes, tonics, elixirs, and salves... so it was no surprise that she picked up the antibiotic bandages. I opted for those. I put one on my shoulder that night. Hooray... our sheets would be spared!

Everything went well that night, and the next morning I proceeded with my daily activities. Woke up, biked to school. Worked out at the Wooden Center, went to class, and then to work.

This is where the story takes another inevitable turn for the unsavory.

So I'm sitting in my History of The Built Environment class when I notice a smell. An unpleasant smell. I look over my right shoulder and notice a prospective culprit. A guy wearing birkenstocks. I let my nose linger in that direction for a moment, but dismiss the source. I look in front of me, perhaps it's the architecture student - you can't trust those guys right!?!

Nope, not him either. I look down at my beloved R.E. Load messenger bag. I sweat a lot on that thing. I smell it once... then twice... in the middle of class. Nope, clean as a whistle.

That smell, what on earth is that smell?!? It's a combination of B.O, stinky feet, and... rotting food. Really gross. I'm sure it's someone's stinky feet but I can't identify the culprit. Inevitably, my 15 minute scent-witch hunt ends and I find myself drifting back to paying attention in class.

Class ends... and I take the bus to work. I get to work... and I smell the smell again!?! I look over my left shoulder (the shoulder of my wound), and take a determined whiff...

Pee-yew!

I excuse myself to the bathroom where I can partially disrobe and assess the damage. I take off the band aid to give it one last olfactory assessment. BINGO! Really.. really gross. I didn't even have it on a full day, let a lone the "week" it says you can use it for. Disgusting. I can't even imagine the results of a week with that parasite on my shoulder. It'd probably eat my whole arm.

Seriously, It digested my wound. I guess you could say its better now, but it kind of looks raw now, and it is pretty stingy. What the heck band-aid? What kind of double cross is that? People come to you in their moment of suffering and you give them some man-eating foot-stink factory!

Lessons learned. If I could walk around all day like a shirtless Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall, I'm sure my wound would've healed in roughly the same amount of time and I wouldn't have had the traumatic experience of being eaten alive by a band-aid.

I think our first method was better. Tissue folded, and secured on my shoulder with masking tape. The poor man's bandage. (we didn't have the band aids yet)

Kleenex + masking tape is the Poor Man's Band-Aid

Let this be a lesson to any of you who might be in the band-aid market sometime soon.