Two Black Eyes – One Bad Attitude

I have two giant black eyes.  They may, in fact, be the worst black eyes in the history of black eyes.  I spent all day yesterday trying to convince my coworkers that I had not been in a horrible car accident over the weekend.

The thing is…I wish I hadbeen in a car accident, because this is a far more believable explanation than what actually happened.

Sunday, I was sitting out on my back porch w/ my mom just hanging out and talking and having a glass of wine.  Notice I said a glass of wine and not a bottle of wine.  Now, maybe I had a touch of food poisoning or something, but all of the sudden I had the overwhelming urge to throw up.

I ran into the bathroom and I threw up so damn much that I think I saw the baby food carrots that my grandmother fed me when I was a year old.  So….I finish puking up everything I have ever eaten in my entire 31 years on this earth and go back into the living room.  My mom took one look at me, pointed at my face and screamed.

I ran back into the bathroom, took a look in the mirror and also screamed.  I turned around, looked at Max the wonder puppy who had followed me into the bathroom and he barked and ran away.

The reason for all the screaming and barking and running away?  The skin around my eyes had turned brightfucking fuchsia and the eyes themselves were rapidly swelling shut.  Do I even need to point out the fact that this alarmed me greatly?

So, off to the Emergency Room I go.  I walk in and the lady who’s at the intake desk takes one look at me and goes “Holy God!  What happened to you honey?”  I don’t even get the chance to answer here before she’s on the phone with someone telling them that I need to be seen right away and no, I can’t have a seat in the waiting room. 

The triage nurse comes out, takes one look at me and says “Oh my goodness, come with me”.  Which was actually very nice, because what I was expecting was “Crap…you look bad.  Have a seat in the waiting room and someone will be with you in about three hours”.

So, I go back and answer the most insane barrage of questions imaginable:

ER Lady:  “Do you have any allergies”?

Me: Yes, I’m allergic to everything.

ER Lady: What do you mean you’re allergic to everything.  You can’t possibly be allergic to everything.

Me: I’m allergic to trees, grass, cats, dogs, pollen, mold, pine, milk, dust, ragweed, and basically anything else found in nature. 

ER Lady: Are you allergic to shellfish?

Me: No

ER Lady: Are you sure you’re not allergic to shellfish?  Because that sure looks like a shellfish allergy.

Me:I’m sure.  Besides, I havn’t eaten any shellfish and I don’t recall rubbing shrimp all over my eyes, so I seriously doubt it’s a shellfish allergy.

The ER Lady walks out in a huff because apparently she doesn’t appreciate my smartass humour. 

About ten minutes later the doctor walks in and says (and I swear these are his exact words) “Holy Shit!”  He then proceeds to ask me if anyone’s been hitting me.  I explain to him that no, nobody has hit me as is evident by the fact that there was not someone on a stretcher being dragged in  behind me, nor were there any police in the room asking me questions about why I beat someone half to death with a baseball bat.

The doctor then asks me if I’d vomited recently.  I told him that I had and he explained that what had happened was that I had puked so hard that I blew out all the capillaries around my eyes, essentially giving myself two black eyes.

He explained that it was a condition called petechiae.  I asked him “Isn’t that how medical examiners can tell if someone has been strangled to death?” His response “Yes, but I don’t even want to know how you know this”.

Guess all those crime scene shows I watch finally paid off for something other than creeping Nick the hell out.

So basically, there’s not a damn thing that can be done and I just have to wait for the bruising to go down.  The doctor did suggest getting some bright red blush and just smearing it all over my face so that my whole face was magenta rather than just my eyes.

Yes, Nick took pictures of this.  Yes, I will post them when I get home.

But I’m warning you now…It’s bad….REALLY BAD.

As is my attitude over the whole thing.

However, you know you look really fucking awful when you walk into a full emergency room and from the time you walk in to the time you leave, you’ve only been there a little over an hour.  Yes, they were so alarmed by my appearance, I actually took precedence over people who were bleeding profusely and a small kid with a broken elbow.   Not that I was complaining, because I totally should have taken priority over those people.