Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Sorry to leave folks hanging for several hours after mentioning at the end of my previous entry that breathing was painful. I did decide, shortly after posting that, to call for an ambulance. Which arrived in as much time as it took to reestablish my PPP connection and start to edit an addendum onto that entry. (And with my cell phone out of order, I couldn't post an update from the ER.)

The short answer to the question I know many of you have: I've got a contusion somewhere inside my torso, which is what makes taking full breaths (and standing upright, and lying on my back) so painful. It seems there's nothing modern medicine can do for such an injury except prescribe painkillers and wait. OTOH, it just hurts like a #$#%!rf*%^$r as opposed to, like, potentially killing me or something.

A little more info: after not having shown up by the time I called for an ambulance (an hour after my first 911 call), the police also failed to materialize when called by the ambulance crew. They did eventually show up at the hospital, but I had to tell my story to three different officers (a fourth was involved but didn't ask for his own repetition) while finding it more and more difficult to concentrate past the pain. Despite my right cheek puffing up rather impressively and being quite tender, I'm not showing much visible bruising on my face (at least so far).

I'll try to get around to more details later, but for now I'll just point out that I'm not terribly happy with the performance of the Baltimore police, nor with the five hours of being mostly left alone in pain in the ER. (On the way in, I remarked that "this is probably a pulled muscle or something and I'll feel foolish for racking up a huge medical bill for it," ... but I'd have felt foolish if it turned out to be Something Major that I ignored until too late, too.)

I hope y'all will forgive me for postponing replying to the many supportive comments I came home to. I am very, very tired right now. anniemal just arrived, and later I'll ask her to drive me to a pharmacy to deal with the prescriptions I got.