Father’s Day Epilogue
The day started out to be just as I imagined, the best Father’s Day ever. Who would have ever thought it would end so horribly surreal. The kids were fishing off the dock. Suddenly one of the fishing poles dipped strongly from an obviously heavy force and the line took off. With tremendous effort the reeling in began.
Surely this had to be some great fish.
Suddenly the beast crested the surface and came crashing down like the very sea monster I imagined it was. Huge wings flapping and slapping the waves, its tail thrashing, it dipped back under the surface diving deep, no doubt wanting to take one of us with it. What seemed like hours went by and now near exhaustion, the great beast was at the dock when it came crashing down on the deck. Its huge tail swung around and I raised my foot to block it, saving the girls, but its long spear like razor sharp stinger with its poisons ripped through my skin and pierced the bottom of my foot. Pain gripped me as the blood spurted; the gore was now evident over the freshly painted deck boards. Now half delirious I could feel the pain creeping up my leg and into my groin. I grabbed my six inch fishing knife and plunged it deep into the belly of the beast. Now crab bait, I lay back exhausted and dizzy from the toxins that were raging though my blood stream. I did the only thing I could think of, with all the strength I could muster, I screamed for help…
“MOMMY!”
Okay it didn’t exactly happen like that.
Now sitting on the steps of my parent’s deck, my mother was spraying peroxide on the puncture wound in the bottom of my foot.
My wife was busy sweeping grass off the deck. You see when you are from western Pennsylvania these sorts of things seem trivial. “No Blood, No Bones, don’t bother me” is what my wife always says. My brother in law once cut off the end of his finger while milking cows. He placed the severed finger piece on the window sill and finished milking the cows. It was only after he went home and the family asked where his finger was that he went back to barn picked it up and had it sewed back on. That’s grit.
I am not that tough. I am from the Jersey Shore. We have Boo-Boos in New Jersey.
The real story is Savannah caught a small skate. While trying to get the hook out of its mouth, it wacked the bottom of my foot with its tail. Skates, even small ones, have this razor sharp defense mechanism in their tails. So after my mother patched me up, the pain did get a bit unbearable and started traveling up my leg. My wife drove me to the Your Doc’s In Urgent Care in Cambridge Maryland where they were very concerned and took very good care to relieve the pain and ward off infection.
So today I am home as advised, soaking and elevating and will have the local Patient First take one more peek at it, also as advised, later today.
And though I lost three hours in the middle of the day yesterday it surely was the Father’s Day weekend I will always remember, and that memory won’t have anything to do with that skate.
Hope you all had as good a Father’s Day as I did.
