From Day 0 - Part Fourteen

Before my college days are briefly recounted, there was a little incident on the farm that I find to be rather telling regarding the "farming life" and medical self sufficiency. Yes, it is a little gruesome but I am still here writing this, some thirty years later, so apparently I survived.
South of the house was our corn crib that I helped build, the 75 year old barn and a hog shed. After a few years of idleness, the ground around the hog shed had grown up with weeds. The picture here quite closely shows what it looked like. So, my Dad, brother and myself set out one day to chop these weeds down so we could put pigs back in the area. These weeds were BIG; many as tall as seven feet with stalks more than two inches in diameter.

My brother and Dad equipped themselves with machetes. I took the sickle. So, there we were chopping at the base of these tree-weeds when I made a strong chop down. Luckily I was not using an axe.

The point stuck in what I thought was a weed stalk. I twist the blade to free it from the weed. It popped. This wasn't a sound, it was a dull snap felt through my leg. The point of the sickle had not lodged in a weed. It was firmly embedded in my ankle, likely the lower Tibia.

As nonchalant as can be, I told my Dad what happened and we walked back to the house. After he cleaned it out, still feeling no pain, I inform my Dad I wanted to go upstairs and lie down. The last thing I remember was him telling me that was not a good idea.

The next thing I remember was staring up at the ceiling near the stairs with a wet washcloth on my head and my Dad laughing a little. "Guess you ought to stay down here a bit, Slugger."

Ya, I stayed downstairs for a while until my brain reengaged. :-)