Recipe for disaster: take one 76-year-old woman with six hairs left on her legs, multiple varicose veins and one disposable triple-blade ladies razor. Mix with equal parts exasperated daughter and a local emergency room. What do you get? Well, it’s like this…
My mother, God bless her, has never been good with technical things like computers or say, pretty pink razors. She has a puzzling aptitude for messing with them and they misfire. There is no particular thing she does wrong, it's just that said object knows that if possible, she’s going to booger it up. I mean, really, how do you make the window (of Windows-fame) "disappear" into the corner of the computer screen. But she's done it, many, many times. (And called me at work to ask me where the window went!)
So anyway, recently she decided that it was time for her "once-every-six -months-whether-I-need-it-or-not" leg shave. Instead of just plucking those remaining six hairs she grabs a brand new triple-blade razor and a bar of soap. Lathering up those gams, she proceeds to take a whack at said hairs and low and behold, she accidentally nicks one of her varicosities. One that was evidently bored and looking for a Friday night out because with one swift stroke said varicose vein has been severed and begins to spray Type A-positive blood all over the bathroom.
Now as this bloodletting is taking place, I'm peacefully minding my own business in another room. Suddenly I hear my name being called, not exactly with a tone of panic, but certainly with the inflection of "Hey, get in here, now." So, I head
towards the sound of her voice to find her clutching a small piece of tissue over her ankle area. There is a pool of blood on floor and “splatter” on everything else within a 3-mile radius! I swear it looked like a crime scene from NCIS.
Being medically minded, I grab a “maximum capacity feminine protection unit” (Maxi-Pad) and slap that baby over her ankle. At this point, it's just a matter of quenching the hemorrhage before she redecorates the entire room or faints from blood loss. We get the "compression dressing" placed and head for a spot where we can get her leg elevated thus stopping the flow of blood. How we were going to accomplish this was another story in it’s self.
After an amusing (part hobble, part hop) trip to the sofa I get her situated and head back to the scene of the crime to clean up the gory mess. I figure give it 30 minutes of elevation and compression and that little blood vessel will have shut itself off and it will be good as new. 30 minutes -- check the dressing -- she's still a-gushing! OK, maybe 30 more minutes. No dice. I make the veiled threat that if this doesn't stop soon we will have to go the ER. Neither of us figures this will be necessary, but it was kind of my form of chastisement for the shaving of six stray hairs in the first place.
So ninety bloody minutes go by, pun intended, and the blood flow has slowed to a trickle. Things are looking good. About that time she decides she has to go potty and BOOM, that stupid little nick lets loose again and the bathroom needs decontaminated one more time! So yet again I apply the pressure dressing with the maxi-pad/ace bandage combo. But this time I insist that it’s time to the Emergency Room. After an hour and a half, three TINY stitches and a tetanus shot later we have no more blood flow and are finally headed home.
I love my mother and I hate it when grown children treat their parents like they are infants. But if I ever see her with a razor blade again, I swear I'm going to pluck those hairs out one by one with pliers. Then I'll send her to her room with no supper!
