ER

No, not the TV show. I was at urgent care until 1:30 in the morning on Superbowl Sunday. It was nothing dire, but my buddy Mark fractured off a small piece of his pelvic bone and will be on Vicadin for a while.

You see, on Thursday night this past week, Mark came up with this game. He and the guys at church would throw a bean bag to each other as they leapt into the air and caught it and landed on it. This alone seemed dangerous, but boys will be boys.

Well, after the Superbowl we were all still hanging out in the fellowship hall and the boys started playing their new game again. The room we were in actually used to be the sanctuary and so there was a stage about 2 ft off the ground. So Mark decided that they needed to step it up a bit and he started running and jumping off the stage to catch the bean bag.

He did it a couple time successfully and then once missed the bean bag. It went under him and he went over it and did a belly flop on the group. Its carpeted, but only just on top of cement. He laid on the floor (smiling and talking) for quite a while before even rolling over. They pulled him up and he seemed to be walking fine, but he said he was in a lot of pain... a kind of pain he'd never felt before... and he's no stranger to pain.

So, I took him to the ER and they sent us to urgent care. They told us it would take an hour and a half and Mark decided he didn't want to wait and that they couldn't do anything for him anyway... so we left and went to buy dinner and pester Josh (a good friend of Mark's) at his work.

Well, we got back to Mark's house (he's living with some old family friends of mine) and at their encouragement, we went back to urgent care so that we could be sure that nothing serious was wrong with Mark (it could have been an organ or something...). We were the only one's in the waiting room when we got there and after an hour we were the only ones in the whole place. The nurses had a lot of fun with us and Mark had a little too much fun.

By 1:30am they had X-rayed him (and I got to see all of Mark's insides... it was cool!) and the doctor had found the little chip off the front left side of his pelvic bone (technically the pubic bone, I believe), he was loaded up on Vicadin and they sent us to the pharmacy to fill his prescription. Well, by that time, Mark wasn't completely coherent and I was definitely tired... and the hospital was empty... so we got lost and didn't have anyone around to tell us where to go... it was like a ghost town. So after many a u-turns and many amused analyzations of hospital signs, we eventually found our way... it was hysterically funny, but it hurt Mark to laugh... which almost made it funnier...

You know, a ton happened that night.... and I left out some good parts (like about the loony nurse, the doctor's techno music, and the hospital gown) just because this is long already... LOL... maybe I should write a short story or something... LOL! :-D

Anyway, I spent the afternoon visiting Mark yesterday because he stayed home from welding school, and he's doing pretty well. Being on the Vicadin is definitely deceptive, though, because it makes him feel like he can do more than he really should.

So yah... that's my eventful weekend story. :-D