When Your Super Bowl Afterparty is at the ER
/One of my favorite things to pin on Pinterest (aside from Brainy Beanies) are staircase runners. Don't get me too riled up, because I could probably write ten blog posts about them and explain in excruciating detail to you as to why every home needs them.
Tartan with wooden stair rods? Cowhide? Why don't I have either? If I did, I guarantee I wouldn't currently have an ankle as large and as purple as Violet from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
But let's rewind, shall we?
My townhome complex, affectionally known as the "Six Pack" (because, you know, there's six of us), has had a running tradition of mind-blowing Super Bowl parties. One neighbor brings a giant inflatable screen, another has a projector, and lastly someone donates their sound bar for the night. I provide the entertainment.
I enthusiastically planned for this party, like I do with most things that involve an unnecessary use of confetti, artery-clogging food and an excuse to pretend to understand sports.
I got a little carried away with the cookies. And carbs.
We had pretty much everything a good Super Bowl party needed:
Football sippy cups that will never be used again and who's straws will never bounce back after a run in the dishwasher.
True allegiances were not kept secret.
And football was on a large enough screen to admire Tom Brady's backside without looking too creepy.
But the real entertainment happens when one of the hosts trips off her own staircase and her ankle does a graceful 90 degree turn during the most ungraceful of tumbles. We're talking about me here, if you hadn't guessed yet.
In my defense, my staircase had become slippery after dozens of people had tromped up and down them all night with sweaty drinks and wet tennis shoes. But I also just had a pure Meg-Moment and tripped, which has been happening more frequently than I'd like to admit.
Regardless of how it happened (read: I'm thoroughly embarrassed and want something to blame this on), my ankle immediately swelled up to resemble the size of a ping pong ball and the tears starting a'flowin'. I can't help it. I just get emotional sometimes - especially when that sometime is when I thought my ankle was a goner.
The next hour felt like a whirlwind of panic. Not from me. But from my friends and neighbors. One was carrying me upstairs to my bed, while another was trying to shove an Advil down my throat, while yet another was screaming, "where are the ziplock bags!?" for my impromptu ice pack. I was just sobbing, silently, while I watched my ankle inflate faster than I have ever been able to blow up a beach ball.
But ultimately my tears probably scared them more than my ever-expanding ankle and my neighbor graciously put me in her car and drove me to the 24-Hour ER down the street. I must have been quite a sight to the nurse at the front desk: no shoes, sobbing, and my mascara is no longer around my eyes, but has migrated to my chin area. I couldn't even write legibly. This was mainly due to the fact that the pain was excruciating, but also because my eyeliner had also seceded from my lids to invade my eyeballs - making me not only a sad-looking gimp, but a blind one too.
Long story short: its not broken, but it is a severe sprain. The doctor said this in a way like, "oh, but sometimes sprains can hurt worse than actual fractures", but I know he was just saying this to inflate my ego so that I would stop focusing on my inflated ankle. Smart man.
All this is just proof that if I had a beautiful tartan staircase runner with custom made stair rods, I wouldn't have had this problem. The stairs wouldn't have been slippery and I could have saved myself the $100 ER bill, my pride, the ability to work out this week, my high heel privileges for the next fourteen days and a PTO day that I lost all due to my tumble Sunday night.
So the moral of the story is, cowhide runners can truly save lives. Let my lesion be a lesson.