View from the North 40: When life give you hazards ...

So I lived beyond the summer cold, with some lingering signs, but life just keeps throwing it at me like I’m a fan, and I’m really thinking I should have something like worker’s compensation, but I wouldn’t have to work for it, just live for it — maybe survivor’s compensation.

“Oh,” I would say. “I never would’ve lived through it without my survivor’s compensation that paid for the help I needed after, y’know surviving.”

As I have battled the last hints of cough and sniffle from my stupid summer cold, I’ve been giving my big oaf, young horse penicillin shots. Shots that she does not appreciate. Shots that make her want to hurt me. Me. Her medical savior. Whatever.

Let’s move on, though — spoiler alert — the story gets more tragic.

The horse got her last shot Thursday (good lord willin’ and the crick don’t rise, knock on wood, from my lips to god’s ears, etc. it was the last), so it was also her last chance for retaliation. One more minute and I would’ve been done, but that penicillin is like trying to push ice cream through a 1/16-inch hole and it takes forever to inject.

Mere seconds from getting clear of the head-flinging, stomping, tail-swishing horse and being finished and the 1,200-pound horse stomped on then continued to stand on my foot — and my good shoes. FYI, it’s really hard to continue injecting penicillin intramuscularly when all you want to do is flail around, swearing — the universal training technique for removing a horse from your foot and a homeopathic treatment for acute-pain relief.

It was a true character revealing moment. I finished the shot while getting the horse off my foot. I’m that good. The shoe walked away with no lasting damage, but the toe is a bit hosed.

I’ve been binge-watching some medical shows, so I diagnosed the problem with some authority. The big toe metatarsal, is not broken, but does have a one-inch laceration, diagonally across the cuticle. It has what the layman would call a big bruise, but I’m pretty sure is a subdural hemorrhage, with a world-class hematoma building up under the base of the toenail, as well as subsequent and significant swelling and numbness in the affected area.

The numbness is most likely caused by the swelling, but we should order an MRI and call the neurosurgeon. The orthopedic surgeon can wait for now, but we need the plastics professionals here stat to sew up the laceration — actually, I just really wanted to go into the house and prop up my damaged foot with an icepack.

But no.

Instead, the shoe, my big big toe and I went to a work-related interview that I had scheduled four days earlier, and I went even though I smelled of horse and heroism. During the interview I took a few moments to wonder if my grave injury might require having my shoe cut from my foot and a pint of blood in an IV drip to replace what I was undoubtedly losing while sitting around asking questions.

I was so relieved when I drove into my yard finally. All I wanted was that icepack. What I got was a big fat rattle snake right in the road by the house.

Bet you didn’t see that snake coming, either.

So I parked the pickup, grabbed a shovel, limped down the road to the snake, and dispatched the lethal invader, undoubtedly saving the lives of all humans and four-legged freeloaders on my property. Oh, my heroic measures.

As I limped my swollen, unimaginably mangled foot back to the house, carrying the still-slithering rattle snake carcass to deposit in the dumpster, all I could think was that, surely, surely, I deserve some kind of hazard pay for surviving my own life today.

——

The horse doesn’t look remorseful, but she does look like she’ll live. And the shoe and I are back at work today, not dying, whatever, at [email protected].