Ow.

[ladysprite]

Current Score -

Boston Pedestrians: 1
Boston Park Plaza Hotel: 0
Ladysprite: -1

So I was on my way to dance class this evening. I was running late, thanks to a random delay on the T, and was doing my best to hustle down the streets of Boston as quickly as possible. Alas, on a rainy day, 'quickly' and 'safely' do not exactly overlap on the Venn Diagram of Foot Transit Attributes. I hit the sloped surface that led from the street to the sidewalk outside the T station and my feet went up over my head like a cartoon character slipping on a banana peel, and I flew up in the air and landed square on my backside and left hip.

Backsides, while padded, do not deal well when slammed onto wet concrete from 3-4 feet in the air. I was stunned and had the wind knocked out of me, and by the time I figured out what had happened, I was pretty sure I couldn't stand up.

I also realized that, in the 30 seconds that it took me to collect my bearings, at least half a dozen people had stopped to make sure I was all right. One had offered to either help me up or call an ambulance, someone else promptly knelt down in the puddle with me, pulled out his cell phone, and somehow shook my husband's number loose from my rattled brain, while a third ran into the hotel I had fallen in front of and came back momentarily with a bag of ice for my bruises. Everyone stayed nearby until my better half made it there and they were sure I could (with help) stand, and didn't need an ambulance.

Alas, the hotel didn't perform so well. They did send out a concierge to make sure I was more or less unharmed, but her biggest accomplishment was to take away the bag of ice, suggesting that the hotel could provide a real ice pack, then fail to do so. I sat in their lobby for half an hour while random staff members ignored me except to insist, the few times that we asked, that someone would be by with an ice pack in 'just a minute.' None of the buckets for the ice machine had bags, none of the gift stores would give us a bag for ice, and no one ever came through with an ice pack.

I am home now, though, and fairly certain that nothing is broken - 800mg of ibuprofen, some dry clothes, and a lot of TLC have brought the stabbing, 'I destroyed my tailbone' pain down to merely 'this is going to be a beautiful bruise rainbow tomorrow' levels.

The worst part of this is that this was the second time I got knocked on my backside today. Work involved an uncontrollably aggressive 120-pound rottweiler who managed to buck off my attempts at restraint like a rodeo bull with a novice cowboy, throw me to the ground, and lunge at my face with extreme prejudice. If he hadn't been well and securely muzzled, I would be so much dog food right now.

It didn't bother me at the time, but lying on my butt on the wet pavement, I realized just how much of a flashback to the Saint Bernard that mauled me in vet school it was. There really ought to be a limit on the number of Near-Death-By-Angry-Dog experiences any one person can have....

Comments

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

+1

(And heal well!)