And lived to tell about it...

I read a post on another blog about someone hitting themselves in the head with a vaccuum cleaner. It made me think about a little incident that happened to my husband right after we got married...

It was November 1990, and we had been married oh, maybe 2 or 3 weeks. My husband was really big into watching boxing (back when it was interesting) and we had planned a little get together at our house to have a bonfire and some beer and watch the fight on pay-per-view.
So hubby gets the fire going and the guys are down at the fire drinking beer and cooking the dawgs and everyone is having a pretty good time. Nothing much to report so far.

This is the point of the story where I have to interject that at the time, we were heating our home with a wood stove, and my husband wouldn't use a chainsaw to cut the wood - his preference was a little more, well, manual.

Apparently, they got bored down there, and some brain surgeon in the group decided they should have a wood-chopping contest (with alcohol involved - a very bright decision indeed.) Well, the first guy does his thing, and then my husband is up to bat.

This is the next point to interject - my husband chops wood at an angle for some reason - to this day I do not know why.

Well, he hit a bump in the wood... and the AX bounces UP and hits him square in the center of his forehead.

If you know anything about head wounds, they bleed PROFUSELY. Little known fact - wrestlers use small razor blades to put tiny little cuts on themselves on the hairline to make it look like they have been mortally wounded. (useless fact for the day thank you...)

So at this point hubby realizes he has A PROBLEM - except his friends, instead of running up to get me, nearly pass out at the profusion of blood coming from hubby's head.

Weh-yul, Hubby decides to come up to the house himself before he might pass out - he grabs the dog's blanket and holds it on his head and comes into the back door looking like a chainsaw murder victim - blood is just POURING down his face and says:

"Honey, don't worry, but I just hit my self in the head with an AX"

I'm good. Really.

So being very young, and also having imbibed a bit myself (very good for the decision making process I tell you), I panicked. Hubby, being the stable one in the group says - "Call the Ask-A-Nurse hotline - quick!!!" Our hospital system at the time had set up a 1-800 number to cut down on superfluous 911 calls - so here we were putting it to good use....

Here is a transcription to the best of my recollection:

AAN "Hello"
ME "My husband just hit himself in the head with an AX. What do we do?"
AAN "An AX???"
ME "Yes. An AX."
AAN " Are you sure?"
ME "YES."
AAN "Did he hit with the sharp side or the blunt side?"
ME "Uh, the sharp side"
AAN "Is there bleeding"
ME "Oooohhhh Yeah....."
AAN " how much"
ME "Um, A LOT"
ME "Do you think he'll need stiches?"
AAN "Ma'am you need to call 911"
ME "Why?"
AAN "Ma'am please. Call 911."
ME "But he doesn't want to go!" Hubby did NOT want to leave his pay-per-view!!
AAN "Ma'am you reaaaallllyy neeed to call 911"
ME "...I think he can wait, he wants to watch his boxing match before going anywhere - can you just tell me how to stop the bleeding until then?"
AAN : CLICK
ME : "BITCH!!!"

Needless to say, that hotline didn't really last very long. And thankfully, while I was on the phone, one of the more lucid of the ladies there got my hubby cleaned up enough to discover that he only had a 1 inch cut square on the center of his forehead on the hairline (down to the bone - yuck!). So she drove me up to the CVS to get some butterfly closures and we doctored him up right there. To this day, you can barely see the scar.

Ours is a perfect marriage, I spend all my time trying to keep him physically intact, and he spends his time trying to keep me mentally intact.