war wounds

i've been hit by a train. double tracks mixed with friends and coors light. thought the train was on the far set, turned out i was wrong. sudden whoosh and huge steel wall moving 45mph right beside me, i could reach out and touch it, felt the air pushing me back. i stand my ground, turn to toast the driver who had poked his torso out to see what the hell was standing so close to the tracks. it was me. raise my beer up and CLIP, something smashes my hand causing me to hit my friend in the head with my beer. i felt funny. like something was broken. i looked at my hand still hearing the rush of the train going by, and my friend yelling at me for hitting him with a beer...but my hand was unmarked. i felt the bones in my hand, felt weird when i closed and opened it. i thought maybe it was stunned or something. then i touched my elbow. in the blorange night lamplight, all i saw was gore. something had smashed my elbow clean open and all my blood was emptying out. after that, my friends agreed that w
e should head to the hospital, but fast. i remember blacking out, you know how the world gets all fuzzy and warm and i remember sinking to my knees because i didn't want to fall over, but i wasn't really conscious of my balance...i thought i was blind on my knees, but when my sight came back i was on my side in the grass being helped up. i was talking the whole time, my friends were freaking out. anyways, we go to the emergency room, which, luckily, is right across the street. it's 3am. they tell me that usually their train wreck patients aren't walking in. no need for anesthesia. 12 stitches. nothing broken, just smooshed cartilage, nasty scar. everything normal now. one other funny thing...new intern was told by doctor to get pictures of my elbow. a minute passes, in comes intern with polaroid. gets one snapshot before doctor sticks his head in yelling at him saying X-RAY pictures, X-RAY. i still have the polaroid. my elbow looks like an out of focus split open softball filled with blood and
mu
 btw, when you don't have health insurance, it costs 800 dollars to get hit by a train. hopefully that will deter you from doing it. whatever hit my elbow very easily could have hitten my head. the next morning i felt my first real brush with mortality. strange, but after that i started drinking less, but smoking lots more. cigs are so expensive these days, i roll my own. anybody out there roll their own cigarettes? or do you all smoke pipes in your sir arthur doyle coats.

>>> daniel.yocum@Peterson.af.mil 06/25/03 10:42AM >>>
I'm starting to feel like a bananafish out of water, It seems like mental
health issues abound on this list. The worst thing medically that I can
claim (picture Jaws and the scar comparing scene) is my blown out knee from
a motorcycle accident, pretty much a splinter compared to the triage list
being compiled around here. I do have a familiarity with this stuff via
people close to me but Scottie seems to have picked a profession with broad
horizons. Is it the Holden thing you think Kim? or wide open emotional
agoraphobia?
Daniel

i would recommend 'touched with fire:
manic-depressive illness and the artistic temperment'
by kay jamison.

she is perhaps the foremost living expert on
manic-depression. is a doctor; has manic-depression.

kim
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Received on Wed Jun 25 14:08:37 2003