I Blew Out My Flip Flop* UPDATED!

Stepped on a ... seashell. THAT'S how I ended up with four stitches in the mutha effin' ARCH of my left foot. See, as opposed to the idyllic beach vacations had by some of my blogging pals, mine ended in blood and shots and an ER doc who couldn't quit telling me how old I was to have a 4 year old. Really. And blood.

Let me the set scene for you. Last Saturday, we bounded out of bed at the coastal condo of dear old family friends, ready to hit the beach. And here's what happened:

11:03 am - We pay $4 to the nice lady in the booth for the pleasure of parking on the beach.

11:05 am - We find the "perfect spot" and begin The Unloading of kids and chairs and towels and beach toys and a cooler, etc..

11:15 am - We begin The Application of The Sunscreen.

11:28 am - We hit the water, which is warm and shallow as the beach is basically a man-made sandbar, with some patches of seaweed or grass or whatever here and there.

11:30 am - The clouds begin to roll in.

11:32 am - Darkness falls across the land, and we see several bolts of lightning in the distance, coming ever closer.

11:33 am - We decide to pack it up and come back after lunch, weather (or near-death experiences) permitting.

11:34 am - As Peach and I are exiting the water, through some of that seaweed or grass or whatever, I step on Something, and think, "Oh. I just stepped on Something."

11:35 am - We hit the beach and Peach says, "Mommy, I stepped on something a little sharp." I reply, "Yeah - me too." To which T-Bone says, "BABE! Your foot!"

11:36 am - I am now standing in what looks like the contents of an entire bottle of ketchup, mixed with sand. I shit you not. Strangely, it doesn't hurt, but I am terrified that Peach has done the same thing. While standing on one leg, I grab her foot for a quick inspection, and she does have a small scrape, but no blood. I'm doing the bleeding for the both of us, apparently.

11:37 am - As the rain starts to fall, I alert Mama Turista to the situation, trying my best not to freak out the children, and then I bleed some more and quickly begin The Loading.

11:38 am - Ever Johnny-on-the-Spot, Papa Turista appears with his First Aid kit and a bottle of water, and cleans and wraps me up the best he can in this totally ridiculous situation.

11:46 am - We're back in the car, sandy and bloody, and on our way out, we ask the nice lady in the booth where one might get stitches if one needed such a thing. And she directs us to "The EMS Place" over there by the post office. Okay.

So here's where it gets even more ridiculous. As if that's possible. We drop the majority of the crew back at the condo, and Papa Turista ferries me to The EMS Place, which turns out to be some kind of compound situation, and there are no cars or, you know, SIGNS to show us where to go or any signs of life or anything. We finally spot one that says, "Yes! We're Open!" and I think, "Gee - that doesn't sound very medical. But maybe it's the copious amounts of blood I've lost." I hobble up to the door of what appears to be a craft fair or fund-raising bazaar (for The EMS Place?) or some shit, with a bunch of blue hairs sitting at folding tables, eating lunch and quilting. They point me in the direction of another building in the compound, and dammit, if PT and I didn't walk around that entire place, trying 8 different sets of doors, and there weren't nobody home. As I retrace my bloody footprint back to the car, thanking God that I'm not in labor or something, I realize that PT has now called 911. Shit. I hear him say, "Yeah, we're here at The EMS Place, over here by the post office. No, it's my daughter who cut her foot. Yeah. She's 40." Oh. My. God. And not only am I light-headed from the trauma and blood and sheer stupidity of the whole thing, but now the rain has stopped, and I am melting in the 90 degree/2000% humidity those poor coastal bastards consider a good weather day.

So we wait. I bleed. And after 10 minutes, PT calls 911 AGAIN. The dispatcher apologizes and says, "Oh, they was at lunch. They should be along directly." And that's when I heard the sirens. The entire fleet (all two of them) of The EMS Place comes roaring into the parking lot, and three EMTs bust out of the back of one of the trucks and drag me over to it. I had never set foot in an ambulance, and I have to say, the sterileness and equipment organization was lovely. If they got better gas mileage, I might be interested in one myself. After a quick assessment, and mad props for PT's First Aid skillz, they suggested I go to the county hospital for stitches, and in fact, offered to take me there, guns blazing. I declined, several times (I think they were bored or training somebody or something), and they wrapped me back up and sent me on my way.

The county hospital was about 15 miles away, and it is exactly what you would expect a tiny county hospital to be. Complete with NASCAR blaring in the ER waiting room. Luckily, we were the only ones there, so I got in and out pretty quickly, if not painlessly. Y'all. I had never had stitches before, even after berfing two babies, and those numbing shots hurt like SHIT. The doc really scrubbed my wound (I hate that word) and decided that the Something that I (and probably Peach) stepped on was a seashell, of which he found evidence in the gaping gash across the bottom of my foot. Through it all, he kept marveling that I was "so old" and "waited so long" to have such young children, and if he hadn't been elbow deep in my flesh and armed with lots of needles, I would have politely ripped him a new one. Or at least made sure that he wouldn't be making any more babies any time soon. Dumbass.

After a trip to Walmart (natch) to pick up my antibiotic prescription (it really was $4, just like in that commercial) and some gauze pads, you know, for the BLOOD, we were back at the condo by about 3 pm. Peach and Olive had been enjoying the pool, and with the arrival of my nephew Opie, they wanted to head back to the (now) sunny beach. So they did. WITH shoes on. And I stayed behind, hopping around the condo until the numbness wore off, and I started reconsidering my refusal of painkillers. I finally gave in and called Dr. Chauvinist, M.D., who called in a prescription to - yep - Walmart. I swear, I don't know what I was thinking before. ALWAYS get the pain meds, my lovelies.

On Sunday, we completed the Walmart trifecta by purchasing some badly-needed crutches (who knew they sold crutches?) because that hopping shit was getting old fast. Like me. I have been to the beach hundreds, nay thousands, of times in my life, without incident, and in one fail swoop, I step on Something and nearly lose a foot and get stitches and crutches for my trouble. And the one thing that escaped me until much much later, after I had bled and traipsed all over the friggin' county, was that I was wearing my GD bathing suit the whole time. In front of God and everybody. Need more painkillers ...

* Actually, Jimmy, I was barefoot at the time. Also, you're an idiot.

UPDATE: Look what I found left up on my computer this morning. This is why I love T-Bone so.