Lacerations and Contusions (warning: contains significant bodily injury porn)

 

Some questions probably come to mind right away: 1) Why begin with an image of Dan's mileage? and 2) Lacerations and Contusions? Huh??

The answer to the first question is easy. The first photo in a post usually shows up as an icon when a link to the post is displayed, and Dan didn't want his injury porn to show up like that, all over, willy-nilly. In fact, this is a good time to warn anyone who doesn't want to see bodily injury porn to bug out right now. Don't say you were not warned.

Still here? Good. Now, it's time to answer the second question.

It's 4:30, and Dan is pretty happy. He's gone through his morning routine, and it looks like he will be able to arrive early at Lake Medina, where he is to meet his running friends at 5:15. This may enable him to get an extra mile or so in, ala the Dan of Olde. He puts his stuff in the car but doesn't drive off right away. That's because of Nipper. 

Nipper, his robotic mower, is in the backyard, and even after taking some special measures, he spends too much time there and too little time doing the front. After sending him out on a special mission to do the front at this early hour, Dan realizes that Nipper is mowing the back despite these wishes. Dan decides to walk back there and physically take him to the front. He's done this before, but not in the dark.

Dan walks around the side of the house and spots Nipper, headlights and all, mowing a corner in the back. In a slight hurry (because he still wants to get those extra miles in), Dan begins to stride over to retrieve his wayward pet mower. That's when things begin to happen very quickly. Dan trips over the two-foot-high garden fence (the one that he should have been well aware of) and begins falling into the garden itself. But he's stopped by a three-foot-high metal fence post, the kind with three sides that are rather sharp at the top. The collision occurs on the left side of his chest.

His first thought is that he is completely impaled by the post. His second thought is that perhaps he's not impaled, but why does it hurt so much? And then: will he be able to even get up at all? He prefers not to be found here by his wife, Debbie when she wakes up in three hours or so.

After a couple of horizontal minutes, Dan somehow manages to get up and out of the garden. His next thought is that perhaps it's just a bruise (albeit a painful one), and he can probably still make it to the run on time. But instead of getting right into the car, he decides to perform a quick self-check in the bathroom mirror.

There's a quarter-sized hole in the running shirt, and some blood around it. Removal and disposal of the shirt (don't worry - he owns other running shirts) reveals a surprise. And not a good surprise. The laceration is deep, wide, thick, and long - about 9 inches long. It goes straight across his left pectoralis major, including the nipple. The pain isn't unbearable, and it's not bleeding a great deal, so Dan cleans it up and waits. He waits for the Cleveland Clinic Express Care Center to open, and for Debbie to wake up and take him.

Debbie takes good care of him and gets him to the hospital, where they transfer him to Emergency. They do a chest x-ray (to diagnose the contusions), give him an antibiotic IV, a tetanus shot, and about a billion stitches. The antiseptic and sewing of the sutures are pretty darn painful at times. But the Emergency Room Doc is friendly and talkative. He clearly enjoys his job.

Now sewn back together, Dan isn't so sure what to do with himself. Maybe go out for a run. But not today.

Read (or just scrolled) down this far? Okay, here's your porn.

In the hospital, just before the stitches

Looks like about 22 stitches