Chapter 2: Date Night With Dad!

This evening Dad decided to relive his exciting morning by doing a "re-enactment" of his "vein leak" scene! (see Chapter 1 below)

We had decided to go to the Home and Garden Show. So Dad put on his shoes and as he walked across the floor he looked down and again his pant leg was soaked with blood. He grabbed his leg and I ran for some towels and first aid supplies. We applied pressure but to no avail....the blood kept coming. We wrapped it up tight, without moving the pant leg in hopes that we could slow it down. As you can see by the pictures it just kept dripping (yes, I do have a sick sense of humor but I read somewhere that you heal faster when you laugh).

We decided to call 911 so the paramedics could help stop the bleeding and we could get to the hospital. A few minutes later an ambulance with 2 EMT's and a fire truck with 4 Firemen/EMT's arrived at our door. They came in and started asking all of the usual questions: how old are you, what's your date of birth, what's your name, what's your phone number, what's your social security number....wait! are they signing him up for a credit card?.... In a minute they printed out a little arm band with all of this information on it except for the social security number. At least they keep some things confidential! One of the EMT's started unwrapping our homemade compression bandage (which obviously wasn't very good, back to first aid class for us) and when he got to the pant leg the blood started dripping faster. Dad told them they could cut his jeans so they got out a pair of sissors that wouldn't cut through the fabric. I offered to let them use a pair of ours but they were determined to get theirs to work. Finally, there was success the sissors started cutting. As the EMT folded back the jeans the blood started streaming out across the floor. He put the jeans back over the vein to slow down the stream and then quickly applied pressure. After a few minutes they were able to stop it enough that they could start wrapping it up.

During this time they decided that they would take Dad via the ambulance to the hospital so that we wouldn't have blood all over the van by the time we got there. So 2 of the EMT's went to get the gurney. As they were coming back in the house they rolled through the mud which then was wipped off as they rolled over the carpet on the way to the kitchen (oh well). They helped Dad up off of the floor and strapped him onto the gurney, covered him up with a blanket all the way up over his head....wait!.... Oh, it's raining outside and they don't want his glasses to get wet. They loaded him up into the ambulance and I did what any normal person would do, I ran for the camera. I snapped a picture of the ambulance as it was driving away. I then hurried to wipe up the floor before the blood dried. It was then that I noticed that there was a trail of blood all the way from the chair that Dad was sitting in when he put on his shoes to the kitchen where he noticed that he was bleeding. Oh well, the carpet needed cleaning anyway...