Bump On The Head & A Political Lesson

Late yesterday afternoon I got clocked in the head, hard, with a metal towel rod. So last night was a fun trip to the ER. And by fun I mean three hours of sitting around waiting with an ice pack on my head as a sick baby screamed on one side of me and a woman who wouldn’t shut up yakked to her friends on the other.

Yeah, call me grace, whatever. We’re using our bathroom as a temporary kitchen during construction. I was doing dishes in cramped quarters, water splashed all over the floor, and I thought it was a safety issue, so I wiped it up. When I stood up, BAM! Brought tears to my eyes. And stars. And a giant purple egg on my forehead.

So, Jackson Dinner tonight is gonna be fun. Think I should tell everyone I got injured at a Marsha Blackburn Town Hall meeting? LOL.

I wasn’t planning to go to the ER but everyone reminded me of Natasha Richardson and that little girl who died after getting hit in the head with a hockey puck, and I had a throbbing headache aside from the knot on my head. So trooper that he is, Mr. Beale carted me off to the ER on a Friday night, as long as I promised to assure everyone that this wasn’t a domestic violence incident.


It took me over two hours to see the doctor. When he finally came in the room he told us that for about a month after Natasha Richardson’s death they saw a lot of folks with bumps on the head at the ER.

He then proceeded to say not once but twice that "they didn't have a CAT scan in the Canadian health system, go figure."

I let it pass the first time but when it happened a second time, I realized this is probably something he says a lot and I couldn’t let it go unchallenged. I reminded him that she was skiing in the mountains of Quebec, at a National Park, i.e., in a remote area, not walking through downtown Montreal. Honestly, I don’t know how many rural hospitals here in America have CAT scan machines, either. He said something about how none of us were there, yada yada.

So I got two headaches last night.

He then gave me one of those ammonium nitrate crystal cold packs which I noticed are made in--guess where?--Canada. Mr. Beale observed that no one knows how to keep things cold like Canadians. Oy vey.

What this incident tells me is that even doctors can be really smart about some things and really dumb about some others.