# 134 AN EVENTFUL DAY - Part II

Blue Blood and Black Ice

Last post, I explained to you how I slashed my wrist and with blue blood seeping through the bandage I am now in a panic to get medical attention. But before I continue, I need to also tell you that I have been hunkered down here on the farm since early last fall. And despite the kids’ concern about how unhealthy it is for me to be such a recluse, I haven’t budged. My only outings have been limited to the dreaded trips to town every two or three weeks with Hub driving. So I haven’t been behind the wheel of a vehicle for at least six months, maybe more.

So now in my panic, I’m thinking, “But isn’t driving like bicycle-riding and some other aspects of life? Once you know how you can never forget? I certainly hope that is the case.”

But maybe not. If you don’t drive for that long, maybe it’s better not to, especially under this kind of distressing circumstance. So I begin to think that maybe in my shaken state of mind I should phone a neighbor to take me to the hospital. I know any neighbor would do it in a minute but Hub would so adamantly not approve. He values independence. That’s why he moved a 30 cube-foot deep-freezer downstairs alone, and when it didn’t work, he moved it upstairs alone, loaded it on a pick-up alone, and replaced it with another alone. A hernia-promising effort (that I refused to get involved in). But he did it assisted only by straining muscles and a couple of lengths of rope. But that’s Hub. Independence is as important to him as writing is to me.

So no. I’ll not phone anyone. I’ll not impose on others. So instead I grabbed the keys and jumped in my car. But I wasn’t going anywhere. The car was too buried in the snow. It wouldn’t go ahead or back.

Now I’m really uptight. No blue or red blood coursing through my body now, just the anxious rush of adrenaline that takes over when everything is going wrong. My state of panic has me close to tears, but I found that eventually, with a bit of shoveling, putting car in drive and jumping out and pushing driverless car, and jumping back in and rocking car back and forth by slamming it from D to R and back again (enough to burn out a perfectly good transmission), I got the car out to the road. And so from then on I continued down the road painfully aware of how at every crossroads there is likely to be patches of black ice. Between blue blood and black ice, today I’d heartily vote for a world dressed in monochrome.

Soon I was at the hospital. I parked the car and shut the key off. That’s when I realized I hadn’t had time to brush my teeth so I grabbed a breath mint from my purse, and while letting it dissolve in my mouth, I attempted to calmly take stalk of my situation. But being calm is not easy. And again my mind is flashing broken thoughts – healthcare overload – trivial things – too costly – unnecessary – blue blood – what means this? – what matter? – my rights – rights to medical care – dumb doctors – too dumb to know about blue blood.

I re-examined my wrist and now recognizing that medical help is less than 50 steps away I finally gained a new level of composure and confidence. I decided to bravely peal back the band-aid and take a closer look.

Part III of AN EVENTFUL DAY coming up soon.