Taste the Floor
17th February 2006 by
So I’m sitting in the bar at work. A perfectly ordinary end to a perfectly ordinary week and I’ve barely tasted my second beer. Surely a splendidly relaxing evening lies ahead.
Well, no. Not five minutes later, somebody wants to get past. There was probably room anyway but I’m an accommodating sort, so I pulled my stool in. And in the process, slammed my knee into the corner of an unexpected beam under the table.
It didn’t hurt or anything. It didn’t hurt because I’d hit a nerve so precisely that pretty much my entire left leg had immediately gone numb. And the numbness spread. I had just enough time to hear my colleague start taking the piss before I came over all dizzy and keeled over.
From that point it’s a little hazy. Apparently I came to a couple of minutes later just as every first–aider in the building rushed to my aid, only to stand up as if nothing had happened. And thirty seconds later promptly collapsed again, backwards over a stool, in cartoon fashion, cracking my head on the table and then floor along the way.
All of this was to the accompaniment of OMD’s Enola Gay, incidentally. Words can’t describe the feeling.
The second time I woke up, flat on my back on the floor, I felt absolutely fine, just a little bit tingly in my hands and face. Even now I find it hard to believe I banged my head twice in quick succession. But obviously, everyone was very concerned, so I had to explain that no, I’d had plenty to eat, very little alcohol to drink, had no history of illness in the family and hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary all week two or three times to different people. And then to the paramedics in their ambulance.
Interestingly, it turns out I don’t bleed very much even when purposely stabbed with a needle. Apparently it’s also really, really hard to take my blood pressure and heart rate, although once they’d managed it everything appeared to be okay. It took a while to convince them that I haven’t seen a doctor since I was about 12 years old but other than that I just had to sign to say I didn’t feel like I needed to go to hospital and that was that.
This story could probably use some sort of insightful conclusion about now but really all I’ve learned is that it’s possible to be apparently entirely indifferent to pain but still bang your knee hard enough to knock you out twice in rapid succession. Also that Friday nights in are pretty fucking dull.
What’s ailing you this evening?
