My husband is the King of self-surgeries. It practically takes an act of God to convince him to go and see a doctor. If there is a vitamin, supplement, heating pad or a suture kit available he will attempt to cure himself. This is partially due to the fact he survived sub-par medical care while in the Navy and because well…he’s just stubborn. Surprisingly, he’s quite healthy. In all our years together he has never taken so much as an antibiotic.
While we were dating he developed a wart on his hand. Being the loving girlfriend I was, I bought him an over the counter wart patch. I was going to present it to him when he was off ship for the weekend. He arrived home with a bandage on his hand. Over the weekend, he had cut off his wart with a pair of finger nail clippers and cauterized it with a lighter. He sported a scar on his hand for a few years but hey…the wart never came back.
Years later, we were happily married and living in our first apartment. I was working for a dental office and was used to working around blood and oral surgeries. I was sound asleep one night when I heard my husband calling for me. He had been working a swing shift and had gotten home long after I had been in bed.
I crawl out of bed and open up our door. On the linoleum floor, leading all the way into our kitchen, I see a trail of blood. I don’t mean a few spots of blood here and there, I’m talking about full on blood smears and puddles. My heart starts to pound as I hear him calling for me again. I’m scared to death because I’m picturing a murder scene. We were living in a rough apartment complex so naturally I come to the conclusion that he has killed an intruder.
With shaking limbs, I enter the kitchen to find the strangest sight greeting me. My husband is stripped naked down to his boxer shorts. He’s standing before our stove, the coils bright red, holding a red-hot knife with a gash in his upper thigh spilling blood onto our floor. Keep in mind, this is the man who is now a suit and tie, financial planner! A responsible father who’s always looking out for the safety of everyone in our home.
He looks at me sheepishly. “I came home early and I wasn’t tired so I was playing with my knives. I was trying to throw one up in the air and catch it when it came down and stabbed me in the leg!”
“Ummm…okay…so, why is the stove on?” I ask him in irritation.
“I uhh…tried to cauterize the wound. I’m wondering if you can call one of your doctors (dentist’s actually) and see if they can suture me up.”
“You did what?” I exclaim in anger.
He repeats the story and I’m literally just shaking my head. I don’t even answer him. I grab the first aid kit and tell him angrily. “We’re going to the ER!”
He naturally starts to protest but I’m not giving in. I attempt to bandage his thigh, using up all the medical tape and gauze pads I have. There is so much blood and it’s bleeding through so I grab a kitchen towel and duct tape. I wrap up his leg, wrestle him into shorts and a t-shirt and without giving him much of a choice, I order him to the car.
We lived only a short distance from a large hospital but I knew we’d be forced to wait in a crowded waiting room, with a bunch of people sobering up and in different stages of coming off of whatever drugs they had been taking.
Instead, I drove twenty minutes to the small hospital in my old home town. We walk in to the deserted ER and are quickly brought back. I’ve never seen a hospital so dead. As my husband explains his situation to the young ER nurse, I watch the guy stifle his laughter. He even snorts a few times as he’s trying to be professional. He compliments me on my wrapping job which finally brings out a bout of laughter from him and goes to get the doctor.
Meanwhile, as my husband is patiently waiting with a bright red face and I’m still bristling in anger, we hear a labor and delivery nurse enter the hallway. She is absolutely bored out of her mind with no births to attend to. She asks the ER nurse if there’s anything interesting going on and if she can help out. The ER nurse starts laughing and directs her back onto our room.
My husband now has an audience. The ER nurse and the labor and delivery nurse are attending his leg, cleaning the wound out and asking him to retell the story of how and why he decided to cauterize his own leg.
Then the doctor arrives, a portly man with a barreling type of laughter. He too is enjoying this emergency more than he probably should. I’m watching the three of them laugh at my poor husband as they are preparing to suture up his wound and my only thought is, “He deserves to be laughed at! The idiot!”
The doctor starts in on the sutures. I’m a dental assistant with a bad case of OCD. I’m watching bloody gauze sitting across the doctor’s lab coat, instruments resting on my husband’s legs, suture thread going in all directions and nurses just watching and snickering. All the while the doctor is talking and laughing. Unable to contain myself, I offer to assist him.
He just laughs. “Thanks I got it! I’m not a dentist. I’m used to doing procedures on my own though I’m told you did a great job wrapping his leg.”
I finally smile at the ridiculousness of the entire situation! My husband’s face is still bright red and he’s so mortified by this whole ordeal that he starts attempting a conversation with the doctor, to prove he’s not a complete psychopath. The doctor reveals to us that long ago, he once sutured up a member of Boys to Men. My husband who is still awkwardly trying to make conversation, loudly asks, “Was it Brian McKnight? I love that guy!”
I watched the nurses turn away attempting with all their might to not lose it altogether and silently resist the urge to plant my face in my palms.
On the way home, I have to nicely tell my husband that Brian McKnight isn’t even a member of Boys to Men. He just shakes his head and we attempt to put the entire incident behind us. Meanwhile, at least we provided a little comic-relief to a duo of bored nurses!
I would love to say this was his last self-surgery but it wasn’t. However, with age, he now has the wisdom to know when a professional is needed!
OMG. Yup. That’s my brother. LOL.
After the publishing of this recent post, your brother took another stab at self surgery and unfortunately involved me in it. Let’s just say, a suture at urgent care was involved!