I have never been a fan of doctors, hospitals, medicine, or anything of the sort; it all kind of freaks me out. I don’t know why exactly, but I assume it has something to do with my “don’t get hurt” mentality from my lack-of-health-insurance days. When I get sick, I beat it with random made up home remedies that seem to work, at least in my head. That said, I am also a self verified hypochondriac, but that is a story for another day; for now, a story about about broken bones…

I had made tentative plans to join in a trip to the Sundance Film Festival this week but, due to work, had to stay in California. My girlfriend Margaux, on the other hand, did make the trip to Utah where she partied hard with three-percent (hardly) alcoholic beer, met some actors, and broke her right wrist snowboarding early in the day Wednesday. She has two frequent sayings, “everything happens for a reason,” and “never a dull moment.” She consistently reinforces these mottos. Broken, but splinted, she flew back midday Thursday, and headed to the hospital in the afternoon.

Thursday evening, after dropping Shaun off at the airport, I headed up to the city to join Margaux at San Francisco General Hospital, accompanying her while she went through a process of excruciatingly painful procedures and offering whatever support I could. To be honest, I didn’t expect to be there for six hours and was somewhat panicked when I realized that was the case. But as all good Scorpios would do, I held that emotion back and stayed relatively calm.

The evening started off with an IV administered by three male nurses wearing pink outfits, who decided it was a good idea to take about 40 gallons of blood while in the process, “just in case.”  Needles are one thing that really gets to me, and I started flinching a little bit, but because of Margaux’s insane amount of tolerability to this stuff, I let it go. The fact that they were funny helped a little too; one commented on how depressing it was that he didn’t get compensated for an ambulance ride after getting hit on his motorcycle on the way to work. 

We moved to a room with lots of crazy looking gadgets called the “trauma room,” which I thought sounded a bit extreme for a broken arm until they started the procedures. One doctor asked me if I could go grab the needles, specifically needles, from Margaux’s previous room. I am pretty sure she wasn’t joking, and luckily I got saved by another doctor who exclaimed “no, you don’t have to” and told the first doctor to get them. Phew. They gave Margaux some seemingly ineffective pain killer and started twisting and pulling at her arm.

The first couple attempts didn’t go so well and they had to go at it again with the stronger doctor. This guy put so much pressure on Margaux’s arm I thought it was going to fall off. As he continued to push and pull I started feeling this lightness in my face, like never before, but I stayed still trying to hold Margaux’s hand to give her the slightest bit of comfort. The feeling got worse, and I realized I was one of those people that pass out in these situations. The next few minutes are a blur because I went blind and blacked out. After I came to, I was in a chair in the hallway sipping apple juice getting giggled at because I had walked into another patient in my attempt to maneuver to a chair. Luckily, I never actually went fully out but probably hit 99%. 

They finished up by putting a splint on her arm, which I was able to stay conscience for. While waiting for the final x-ray results we were lucky enough to meet a twenty-something year old named Bart who had chopped off his middle finger. He said that, after laughing about it for a few minutes, he got scared and came to the hospital. They rolled Bart away to a room to get some care. A few minutes later, his friend came in to the waiting area and announced he found the finger inside a glove when he tried to put it on. Gross. We got out of there shortly after that, and despite being in pain, Margaux was happy it was all over (and so was I).

Although it wasn’t exactly an ideal experience, I feel like I grew some respect for medicine, and a ridiculous amount for Margaux for being an absolute warrior. But, you won’t be seeing me in the doctor’s office any time soon; my self diagnosed conditions will fix themselves.