ianwsmith

I bought myself 17 shiny new stitches today.  Whee!

This morning, between morning coffee and breakfast, I was playing with Benjamin, swinging him around and making him laugh when I lost my balance and crashed onto the glass-topped coffee table.  In order to keep Benjamin safe, I took the impact on my knee and right hand, shattering the coffee table top, and rolled off to the left, ending up on my back on the floor with Benjamin  held above me.  The good news is that Benjamin got only a small scratch on his right arm.  I, unfortunately, seem to have decided that my patella wasn't getting nearly enough sun, and remedied that with a large horseshoe-shaped laceration that flapped all the meat off of my right knee.

After bandaging it up we called the doctor, not wanting to go to the emergency room if we didn't need to.  This turned out to be a mistake, as they took one look at the injury and said that they weren't equipped to handle it.  They referred me to the urgent care clinic at Princeton, where I was treated by Dr. Cole, a retired cardiac surgeon who no longer does bypasses and such because he can't afford the malpractice insurance.  So I ended up having my knee sewn up by a heart surgeon, and I feel quite lucky to have had his expert hands on the needle, as I had no idea how bad the cut was until I got there and he started poking around inside my knee.

Unfortunately, my primary care doctor's office had not given me a written referral, so I had to pay out of pocket.  $550. (ka-ching!)

Not that I'm complaining and I would have gladly paid twice as much.  Hey, I even got souvenirs to take home out of the deal!  the 3 surgical-steel clamps and pincer-looking arrangements that they use to do the stitching alone apparently cost the Doctor $80, and must be discarded after a single use.  No autoclave or sterilization procedures allowed.  Dr. Cole gave them to me (after washing them, of course) and said they were great for getting the fleas off the cat, or removing splinters, and that he hated to waste them.  Ha!