And Who's To Blame
Part II
A couple of years ago, I developed some kind of bump on my lower back. It was not anything that looked gross and it never hurt. I didn�t even notice it most of the
time. But, my girlfriend of the time said that I should go to the doctor and have it looked at. My philosophy was �Hey, it�s not bothering me, why bother it?� That continued to be my philosophy until it started to bother me.
Well, last July, while I was in Law Enforcement Training, it became inflamed and infected. It turned from white to dark red. It was extremely painful. I couldn�t touch it or let anything touch it and it became very hard; like I had a golf ball under my skin. After consulting with my parents, I decided to go ahead and make a doctor�s appointment, even though I did not have health insurance.
Meanwhile, I had to keep up with the daily activities of my training. On the day of my appointment, we were scheduled to spend the entire day out on the shooting range. My appointment was at about three in the afternoon, so I would be staying on the range until about two. It was over 90 degrees that afternoon. The sun was beating down on the white, gravel ground of the outdoor range. We were responsible for supplying our own water. I drank moderately throughout the day to
avoid the fiberglass Johnny-on-the-Spot that sat baking in the heat. It was about 1:30 to 1:45 and I was considering when I would be leaving. We were participating in a reloading drill where, each of us would fire a certain number of rounds on a steel target (angled down so that the bullets would fracture and the fragments would, mostly, be driven straight into the ground).
I had completed firing my rounds and called �Cover� for my partner to cover me while I reloaded. I knelt on my left knee. As I was reloading I felt two simultaneous stinging sensations, one in my hand and one in my right leg (just below the knee). I called �Ready� for my partner to stand off and I stood and fired my rounds again, completing the drill. I reholstered my firearm and began to examine my knee, as it hurt worse. When I bent down, I noticed blood dripping on my boot. My first thought was that it would not be possible for my knee to drip blood on my boot that way through my pants. As I took my left hand away from my pant leg, I noticed that a trail of blood seemed to follow it across the ground. I looked at my hand and it was coated in blood. I raised my other hand and stepped
off of the firing line. Fortunately, we had someone there who was well trained in field medicine and had an extensive first aid kit. We found the shrapnel piece from my knee still embedded in my pants. The piece in my left pinky, however, was still in my left pinky. He dug around with a pair of forceps for a while with no luck. I got light-headed and lost my vision while he was working. I got tunnel vision as if I suddenly had glaucoma or cataracts or something. In the darkness, I saw hundreds of what looked like fluorescent sperm dancing around. It was a unique sort of euphoria. For a moment, I wasn�t sure where I was. I could have been high. It was the sort of feeling I can imagine a person in the desert would get when they hallucinate and see an oasis. I never completely lost consciousness, though. After re-hydrating, I told him not to worry about the fragment. I was getting ready
to go to the doctor and I would have them look at it.
At the doctor�s office, they determined that I had some kind of infected cyst on my back and they would need to cut it open and scrape it out. They did a poor job of
anesthetizing that area, and then went to work. It was a painful procedure, to say the least. The numbing shots were very painful and the scraping was very painful. About the only thing I didn�t feel was the piercing of the scalpel into my pus-filled flesh. Toward the end, the attending doctor wanted to take one last go at it. I�ve never come so close to passing out from pain in all my life. When they finished, they packed the hole in my back with sterile gauze. Little did I know at the time, it took about an 18-inch strip. I got up and looked at the bed I had been on. The white butcher paper was all torn and wadded up. It was wet from my spit and tears. I asked the doctor to take a look at my finger and my knee. She did, but was not able to find the metal piece either.
I had to go back every day to have my back repacked. The packing was also extremely painful. They said if I had come in when I first noticed the bump, it probably could have been taken care of with ointment (fucking ointment!!). As my finger healed, it became obvious that I still had a piece of metal in it. I can still feel it to this day. I asked the nurses who packed my back about it. Their philosophy was �Hey, if it�s not bothering you, why bother it?� Fucking great. I�m like the George Castanza of the medical world!
-- Paddy
(Part III Coming Tomorrow)