My Ambulance Ride

Sit back and enjoy this thrilling tale of the one time I got to ride in an ambulance. This memory was brought back to me after seeing Jake Locker taken off the field in an ambulance, for you see, about 10 years ago I had a similar situation. I was not hit by a vicious defender, however, I was hit by a Geo Metro driven by an idiot. I was riding my motorcycle, happy as can be when said driver backed out of his driveway right in front of me because he was apparently in too big a hurry to look and see if anyone was coming.

I was in a residential neighborhood, cruising along at 25 mph at the time, so it wasn't a big collision, but after sliding to a halt, some kind neighbor came running out and asked me if I was ok. I didn't feel any pain, but did a quick pat down to make sure everything was still there and where it was supposed to be. It was at this time that I noticed blood dripping from the fingers on my right hand. I pulled up my sleeve and looked at my arm and saw a nice gash right down to the bone. I immediately looked away because, well, seeing my own bones bothered me quite a bit. The adrenaline must have been pumping pretty good because I still didn't feel any pain.

Shortly afterward, the ambulance showed up. Some EMT's spent a few minutes poking at me and asking if this hurt or that hurt. No, nothing hurt and they concluded that the only injury was what would turn out to be a broken arm. So naturally they slapped a neck brace on me, told me to hop on the gurney, and proceeded to strap me down so that I couldn't move, and tape my head to the gurney so I could only look straight up. We stopped somewhere on the way to the hospital - I'm not sure where because all I could see was the ceiling. I assume one of the drivers was jonesing for some slim jims or something and decided to make a quick stop at the 7-11.

That was enough of a slowdown that my brother, who wasn't at home at the time and didn't get home until shortly after the ambulance left, was at the hospital waiting for me by the time I got there. The other nice touch was almost getting dropped when they pulled me out of the ambulance because the wheels on the gurney didn't drop on their own.

That's when I realized that they will slap a neck brace on you and throw you in an ambulance at the drop of a hat, and why I wasn't overly concerned about Locker being carted out. I just assumed that they were being extra cautious.

Anyway, after laying in the emergency room for a good 45 minutes to an hour, a doctor finally came in to see me and I got to spend what seemed like the next few days, but in reality was probably only 2 or 2.5 hours having glass, paint chips, and various other debris dug out of my arm. The adrenaline had stopped by then because I can guarantee you that I felt that. They administered several shots of novocaine, but there is no amount of novocaine in the world to overcome that amount of discomfort. Luckily they had me face down so I couldn't see what they were doing, but I did look over occasionally to see a look of horror on my mom's face. I just had to grit my teeth and clench my other fist, and I was sweating like I was being interrogated by the KGB. Now all I have to remember the experience by is a nice scar on my forearm. And I guess the moral of the story is that if you ever have an injury that requires them to dig debris out of a body part, save yourself the pain and just have the limb amputated.