Amanda Gets Stitches!

As I was leaving work at 5:00pm today I got a call from a nasally-sounding, weeping sister.  “Can you come take me to the hospital?  I think I need stitches.” I fly from work in the pouring rain, wondering what type of condition I am going to find Mandy in.  For those of you who know her, you probably already are aware of how hysterical she can get when she’s upset.  She is the living embodiment of Murphy’s Law, representing all that can go wrong, probably will.

I am weaving in and out of traffic and debating which hospital to take her to.  The North site is probably the best hospital on Staten Island, but there’s bound to be a 6 hour wait.  I decide on the South site, which is on Seguine, as the car retches to a stop in front of her driveway.  I bolt up the stairs and throw open the door to find Mandy cradling her head.  Thank goodness the tears have subsided.  She had a gash just above the middle of her right eyebrow that had the uncanny resemblance to that of Scar’s from the Lion King.

“I was pulling things off the shelf and Justin’s stupid Humidor fell off and hit me in the head”.  I recently just discovered what a humidor is.  It’s a fancy smancy term for a cigar box.  Supposedly it keeps the cigars at a perfect temperature or something.  So picture Mandy, scaling the shelves pulling on something and this giant wooden, humidor box flies down and bounces off her head.  The image cracks me up inside.  The bleeding had stopped but for cosmetic reasons I voted we go to the hospital to get her professionally stitched up, (for those of you familiar with the horrific hatchet job SI North did on her knee after the High Rock Challenge you would want to see a plastic surgeon as well). 

Kaylee, my 22 month niece, kept looking at her mom with this adorable look of concern on her face and kept  saying “booboo”.  We piled into the car and made our way to Hylan Blvd.  At first, we stopped at the Staten Island Physican’s Care, (it’s the urgent care center, you probably know it better by the little sick sun icon with a thermometer in its mouth).  If you ever need an immediate plastic surgeon, do not go there, they do not have one on staff.   So Seguine it is.  When we arrive Mandy’s feeling quite nauseous, (I assume she has a slight concussion).  To my delight there are zero people in the waiting room.

I walked into Mandy’s emergency room and see a little boy, about 3 years old, clinging to his mom and dad in the bed adjacent to Mandy’s.  The boy needed stitches after suffering from a fall at home.  Mandy was sent up for a CT SCAN and I passed time by chatting with the parents next door.  Kaylee was unbelievably unruly, and my OCD was ticking furiously as I pulled her away from touching every hospital surface in sight.  I would have loved to put her in a plastic bubble for the 3+ hours we spent there.

The parents next door said that they were friends with an excellent plastic surgeon, who was called in specifically to stitch their son up.  What luck!  We waited for hours for him to arrive, and when he finally did he had no problem sewing Mandy up as well.  

The whole reason I decided to blog about this was because when Mandy got the initial shots of novcocaine to her eyebrow, (which I admit was painful to watch because she was squirming and owwing a lot) her WHOLE EYEBROW BLEW UP.  The only image I can compare it to would be the scene from the the movie “Land of the Lost” with Will Ferrell.  When Will gets bit by the mosquito and turns around the next day to put his shirt on and all you see is a giant swollen mountain of red flesh, that was Mandy’s eyebrow.  So now this surgeon is trying to stitch her eyebrow back together again and I just start laughing hysterical.  Mandy notices me laughing and then she starts laughing because she knows how ridiculous she must look.  The doctor is trying to get me to stop so Mandy will cease moving but I am doubled over from laughing.  In between breathes I joke that it’s an improvement, and Mandy chimes in “will this affect my modeling career?”   The astute doctor looked bewildered.  Mandy received 7 stitches. 

Of course I am including the money shot, however it simply just does not due the actual image justice.  It literally was a horn on her head.  

When we left the hospital it was around 8:30pm.  We stopped by the College of Staten Island so Mandy could show her professor why she missed class that night.  When he saw her, all he did was shake his head and say, "the things students will do to get out of class".