Sutures

Last Saturday, while I was taking a shower, I somehow lost my footing and found myself lying face down on the bathroom floor. I opened my eyes and saw a pool of blood. "Daddy!" I called. My husband came in a few moments later and told me, "You need to go to the hospital." 

A few minutes later, we were at Cardinal Santos Medical Center. The Surgery Resident on duty confirmed my worst fear, "You need to get sutures." CRAP. Super crap. My daughter's first birthday was less than a week away. I spent the last couple of weeks planning for it and making sure that everything will be super pink, super frilly, and achingly pretty. Somehow, getting bruises and a fresh scar ON MY FACE was not part of the plan. This will probably be the ugliest week of my entire life – with bruises, a half-swollen face and a huge gash under my eyebrow.  I was not keen on immortalizing myself as 'Scarface' in all the pictures we are planning to take during the party – maybe the wound will close up on its own and be less visible WITHOUT stitches? It was at least worth a shot, "What if I don't get stitches?" The resident explained to me that if I didn't get patched up, the gaping wound just below my eyebrow would take longer to heal, leave an uglier scar, and had a greater chance of getting infected. Even though I hated the thought of me as 'Scarface', the alternative seemed worse. I consented.

This is the worst possible week to get injured. I did a full lap across my mental to-do list. First, there's the party a couple of days away and all the last minute details that needed to be sorted. Second, my dad is admitted in the hospital recovering from Radiofrequency Ablation to treat his liver tumors. Although the procedure went well and he is simply resting, as the unofficial medical manager - in charge of all his treatments and appointments - I needed to be with him during conferences with his doctors, etc. Third, our company is participating in a major exhibit at the World Trade Center from Wednesday to Saturday, with ingress on Tuesday. Splitting up our staff between our main office and WTC means more work than usual. And I am assigned to be at the exhibit for ingress (dusty!) and the first show day (busy!). Fourth, we are in the middle of a major office rennovation with white dust flying everywhere and constant arranging and rearranging of furniture, files, etc. Things are already hectic as it is with everything getting lost under a film of white dust. Fifth, my aunt who is visiting from the States is leaving on Tuesday and there's the matter of my cousins' last minute requests to shop for. Sixth, my mom is also undergoing physical therapy for chronic back pain. And lastly, I'm going on a trip with my mom next Sunday... that means I also need to stock up the pantry, fix the kids' schedules, get their doctors' appointments out of the way WITHIN THE SAME WEEK. Needless to say, I didn't have TIME for this injury.

So while I was getting stitched up, I couldn't help thinking how unfortunate or 'malas' everything is. How unfortunate that I'm gonna be so ugly for my daughter's party. How unfortunate that this had to happen ON TOP OF everything that's already scheduled to happen this week... And how was I supposed to squeeze in a doctor's appointment to remove my sutures in the middle of this crazy, crazy week?

Somehow, in the middle of my internal complaints about how 'malas' I am for falling in the bathroom and cutting and bruising myself, this thought suddenly flashed in my mind: What if it was my dad who fell in the bathroom? Or my mom? Or my daughter who is just turning one? For my dad who has liver cancer, and who is diabetic and whose platelet count is half that of a normal person - falling in the bathroom and cutting himself is SURELY a recipe for disaster. And my mom, who has bad knees because of osteoarthritis and has chronic back pain - her chances of falling in the bathroom is probably a lot greater than mine. What would the consequences be? And how about my sweet smiling baby daughter?  Sure-footedness is not a one-year-old's best trait - they fall a lot. What if she fell and needed stitches right before her first birthday?

I realized then that there are far worse things than falling in the bathroom, getting stitches and becoming immortalized as 'Scarface' in all the pretty pink pictures. Getting injured in the middle of a very busy workweek is at its worst a very big hassle - nothing that I cannot handle. But imagining it were my dad, or my mom, or my daughter? My mind refuses to even go there.

Dear God, thank You that it wasn't my dad, or my mom, or my pretty little daughter. For these reasons and any other reason I cannot quite fathom, thank You for giving ME the stitches.