i hurt myself last week.

It was one of those bad luck moments that i’ve rarely had in my generally charmed. i’ve never broken a bone, i’ve never been diagnosed with cancer, and i’ve never had stitches. One of those is no longer true.

i had just finished dropping my daughter off at day care, which is set up in a little house. i usually bring her stroller through the gate to the backyard and cover it up, and then come back out through the gate and walk home. It was on my way down the driveway from the gate that i stepped to cross over to the front walk. There was a mound of ice there.

It was the kind of ice that forms when a pile of snow dwindles and melts until it becomes a shrivelled, compacted stretch of hard lumpy glass. Thanks to a recent thaw, it was also one of the only patches of ice left in the city. i came free-wheeling down the driveway, nearly skipping like a leprechaun and pleased as punch with myself because i loved my daughter, it was a bright sunny day, and i’d lived my whole life cancer free, with intact bones and no stitches. And then, out of nowhere, my legs flew out from under me to my left.

As gravity pulled the rest of me down, i remember thinking “Hey, legs. That’s not the way you ought to go. You see, walking is like controlled falling. i fall forward, and then put a leg out in front to catch myself. Then i repeat the process, thereby achieving locomotion. But this whole business of you swinging out sideways is entirely counterproductive. You see, for one thing …”

And then i hit the ground.

Or rather, my right knee hit the ground.

Or rather, the icy patch.

Or rather, the lousy sonofabitching icy patch.

At this point, gravity and my unfortunate and recent weight gain formed a pact to do their job in tandem. Gravity pulled me to the ground, while my bulk made sure to make it a hard landing. My first reaction was shock. My second reaction was to look across the street to see if anyone had noticed me falling, because that’d be pretty embarrassing. And my third reaction was to say the effword.

Then i got up, gingerly, and said the effword some more. The effword was, in fact, my fourth, fifth and sixth reactions. It also formed the better part of reactions seven through thirty-five, as i shuffled around in a circle, clenching my fists despite the pain, and uttering “EFF eff eff eff EFF eff eff eff” like some profane choo choo train. Like the Little Engine that Could … Offend Your Grandma.

i chugged around my little circle, the words of my non-existent grade ten gym coach running through my mind - “Walk it off, Pidwerbeski. Walk it off.” My name wasn’t Pidwerbeski, and i stopped taking gym in grade nine after it was no longer mandatory. Hmm. Maybe i’d seen that gym coach in a movie?

i sat down on a little bench in front of the day care to survey the damage. How come it hurt so much? Ah, yes. There it was. i had torn my pants wide open at the knee. i hiked my pantleg up a little and looked through the gaping hole. There, in my leg, was another gaping hole. Apparently, i had also torn my knee wide open at the knee.

There was an ugly little flap of skin, growing paler by the second, bunched up below an inch-wide hole in my knee. There was very little blood coming out of the hole, perhaps because of the way the wound was formed. It was deep, but not deep into my knee towards the bone. It was deep down the length of my leg, if you get my drift.

If not, i have buried an extremely graphic image of my wound below the fold. Please continue only if you have an extremely strong stomach or, failing that, a bowl nearby to contain the profuse amount of vomit you’re likely to spew at the mere sight of this.

You see how Beaker’s mouth is like a vertical, open gash? That’s a little like what my knee was like. Picture Beaker with his mouth closed, and you get the idea.

Please, ma’am. Please - it’s over. Please stop vomiting.

Immediately after my knee sent extremely powerful pain signals to my brain, it stopped. i see this as the fulfillment of a contract between my body and brain after a conversation i had last week. i’ve said over and over, last week at the latest, that pain makes no sense to me. i mean, yes - thank you, body. i realize i just slipped on the ice like a dumbass and that i did you some harm. You can stop sending my brain pain signals now. i am well aware of the danger.

So being, as i mistakenly thought, well aware of the danger, my body decided to humour me. It stopped sending pain signals to my brain entirely. It was the weirdest thing. i sat there with a hole in my knee, feeling right as rain.

i wondered for a moment if i should go into the day care and ask for their first aid kit, but i didn’t want to traumitize a room full of adorable little cerubs with my bloody open gash, and i DEFINITELY did not want a Dora the Explorer band-aid. That little girl is so stupid that i worried i’d become more of an idiot through osmosis with her plastered all over my body.

So i marched on home, gaping wound, wondering what my next move should be. Play along at home, if you’re interested. In my position, would you:

a) Wait for six to eight hours in a Canadian hospital emergency ward waving a little flag and saying “yay for universal health care”
b) Sit idly by and hope for some of that rad self-healing that Wolverine experienced in all those non-fiction medical pictorials
c) Sit idly by letting the wound fester because you had this cannot-miss business call from the CEO of the world’s largest corporation in your industry, and spend your six to eight hours later in the day when your time wasn’t so damned precious.

If you chose “c”, you could be me. Aren’t you lucky?

The call could not be missed. i didn’t care if i had a shard of plate glass sticking out of my eye - as long as i could carry on a coherent conversation with mister bigshot CEO, i didn’t care. The call had been scheduled for several weeks, and i wasn’t about to miss it for a simple gaping knee wound.

i did call my wife in the intervening hours. My Big Call wasn’t until noon, and i hurt myself at 9. In between, i asked my wife what i should do, and i sent her a blurry picture of the wound with my camera’s last gasp on a low battery. She said i should get it looked at. Like any brave little soldier, i wrapped my yawning leg hole up in some gauze and waited for the call.

Once it was over, i went down to the walk-in clinic a few blocks away and waited, a patient patient, for the on-call doctor to see me. i was invited into a room about 45 minutes later.

The triage nurse asked me all about the accident and when it had happened. It was this bizarre foreplay where we skirted around the issue for a good long time before she finally asked to see the wound. She asked if i thought it needed stitches. It was kind of like a mechanic asking you if your car needed a new fanbelt. i had no idea. Wasn’t that up to her?

i pulled up my pantleg and slowly began unravelling the gauze. As the dressing became thinner, layer by layer, the stain of seeping blood and amber ooze got thicker and thicker. i felt like i was unveiling the Elephant Man’s face after Botox. The nurse’s eyes grew slowly wider until the Big Reveal. And there it was - my knee nexus - in all its gaping glory.

The nurse said “Uh … yeah. Pfft. Oh yeah. That’s gonna need stitches.” She looked at me as though i’d said “Doctor doctor! My body gets wet when i swim!” As if i should have instantly known that the window into my insides could only be helped by sewing it up. Lady, i’m no doctor. And i failed home ec.

The nurse said the people at reception should have sent me in sooner, and was surprised they hadn’t asked me my condition when i registered. i’m actually glad they stopped doing that at the clinic. i was never a fan of handing my health card to the lady behind the glass and saying, before a crowded and silent room, “IT BURNS WHEN I PEE.’

i’ll spare you the details of my suturing. Suffice it to say, i have a higher pain tolerance than i thought i did. Also, doctors don’t wait for freezing to take effect. It’s like a boxer who starts punching before the bell even rings.

Today, nearly a week later, i grew a beard in the waiting room. i waited a few hours to see the on-call doctor to have the stitches removed. The room was silent when i finally saw him.

He took one look at my black, necrotic knee, and said “Oh.” It was the way your mom says “Oh” when you tell her you knocked up that mentally retarded girl from down the street. It was a despairing, disappointed “Oh.” He took a swab of the fizzing liquid dripping from my wound like Satanic tree sap and put it in a tube. Then he grabbed a pen and said “Is it okay if i write on you?”

i felt like saying “you’ve got a notepad right there, Doc,” but he had alarmed me a little to the point where my inherent smartassed instincts didn’t come as naturally. “Mmsure.”

He drew a circle around my wound. Then he looked at me, locking his eyes with mine. It was a scene from an M. Night Shyamalan movie, where everybody speaks in hushed tones, and the twist ending was that my knee was infected and was going to kill me. He said “You see this circle? You see this red area? If this red stuff extends more than a half inch outside this circle, i want you to call us right away.” i nodded gravely.

He invited me to come back after the weekend to “have the stitches out”, in the same patronizing way you’d tell the son of a death row convict “daddy’s in Heaven now.” It aint’ gonna happen. i’m going to show up on Monday, and the doctor will be there with a bonesaw ready to amputate my leg.

Here i sit, staring intently at my knee, at the circle. My left hand is on the phone receiver. My right hand is on my gun. i keep hallucinating the redness creeping outside that boundary, and my finger tightens on the trigger and the receiver, one after the other. If it happens, i don’t know how fast i need to make the call, but i know this: if i don’t dial the number in time, i’ve got six bullets that say the infection’s not gonna make it to the area my bathing suit covers.

i need that body part to solve the mystery of my burning pee.