Back in 2007 I was in physical therapy after severely injuring my right leg in a fall. I fell in the worst way, there is a name for it, but I can't remember what it was anymore. This is 3 weeks after:
What you don't see in the pics, taken on a digital camera with a weak red response, is all the bruises I had all the way up until my rib cage. The actual bruise on my knee above was much larger, you can't see the less intense parts of it in a pic from that camera at all.
The "baconfoot" would last for well over a year, and I had a quart or so of clotted blood at the bottom of my thigh that took a long time to finally dissolve. The ER doc told me to wait to go to PT until I could lift my leg, and that took just over 2 months. At the third PT session, the day before Thanksgiving, I was on the "Totalgym", the thing Chuck Norris plugged, and they said, "Ok, go home, have a happy Thanksgiving, and see you Friday!", and as I was getting off the machine, my right knee folded up like a wet noodle, as it was prone to do since I hurt it, and I went down hard, reinjuring my right knee and doing something insanely painful to my left knee. To say I was "upset" was putting it mildly. I punched the thinly carpeted concrete floor, and yelled, "Now I'm really ___________!". I would have sworn I broke my hand, but no, it just hurt really bad. The same paramedics who picked me up the last time took me to the hospital again. As I was riding in the back of the squad, the arm cuff was very uncomforable, and I looked at the digital readout and it said, "254/190". "WOW! " I said to the paramedic, "Is that really my BP?", and he said, "Yeah, do you feel OK?", I said, "I feel fine, I'm just really (A common word for angry/Upset)!". By the time we got to the hospital, it was down to about 190/130. The doctor told me that 254/190 was " very dangerous", and I told him, "If I could have stood up, I would have ripped that ambulance apart, I've never been as angry as I was an hour ago!". He said I was lucky I just didn't die on the way over.
I was on meds for BP ever since, but the only time it's even been "a little on the high side of normal" is when I either get hurt from a fall, or don't sleep, like when I was in the hospital "Cardiac Observation" unit for 5 days. The noises, people talking and laughing, the coming in and taking your BP twice a night, and drawing blood once, and asking "Are you having chest pains?", enraged me to the point my BP was climbing, even with the meds I was on. I basically had no sleep from Tuesday night before work, until Sun afternoon, when I totally flipped out and chewed out the poor doctors who came into my room to talk to me about my BP. When the first doctor said, "Mr. Hemiram, we are very concerned out your BP!", I was off, yelling at them loudly enough that almost everyone in the building could hear and understand what I was saying. I told them that if they didn't leave me alone that night, no BP readings, no blood draw, and most importantly, no asking me if I was having chest pains, I would leave the next morning, AMA, I didn't care, as I was sure I would die if I didn't sleep. I told them to get the hell out, and the other doctor said, "We would like to run a stress test!". I replied, without unclenching my teeth, "What the ______ do you think the last 5 days has been? GET OUT!". I was the talk of the hospital, a friend's wife heard me but didn't know it was me yelling. She had never heard me angry before, let alone insanely angry as I was that day. They left me alone, and in the morning, just before breakfast was brought in, my BP was 120/80. The next day, they shipped me off to a rehab place, and a whole bunch more nonsense occurred, but my BP was fine, even after I fell there on the 3rd day, and totally tore my left quadriceps. Oh what a fun period Aug 17, 2007 was until just before Xmas.
