11 Stitches

I thought I switched from Karate to Aikido so I wouldn't get kicked in the head!

Wednesday night, we were doing a simple drill. I was bringing the newest guy at the school to the ground with a kind of pressure point technique. He flipped forward into a roll and his heel hit my head in a glancing blow.

Wierdest thing I've ever seen. He barely hit me, but for some reason it split the skin wide open.

After he hit me, I thought nothing of it. Then I saw a drop of blood fall. When I raised my hand towards my head, my upturned palm got to about my shoulder when a stream of blood poured into it. I cupped both my hands, trying to prevent the blood from getting on the white canvas.
My sensei rushed over and guided me off the mat and over to some paper towels. We applied direct pressure. The bleeding stopped pretty quickly. We all agreed that stitches were necessary, since I didn't want a huge scar on my forehead. I didn't trust anybody there to do a decent job of it, (They offered) so I changed clothes and drove myself to the ER.

This is the same ER that I went to after my car wreck. Once again, the ER was crowded. Once again, there were three white people with obvious injuries: Me, a woman with her hand wrapped in a bloody towel, and a man holding his left arm, wincing in pain. The rest of the ER was filled with latinos with, as far as I could tell, no signs of injury or illness. Call me a racist or whatever, I just calls 'em as I sees 'em. Why do these folks hang out at the ER? Help me out here.

I spent a total of three hours at the hospital for five minutes worth of stitching, and I was on the "FAST TRACK". I almost didn't make the fast track. When they first took me in, they took my blood pressure and it was reading high, something like 160 over 110 with a pulse of 87. They wanted to put me in a room where they could monitor my blood pressure the whole time. I explained that I was right in the middle of working out when I got hit, then immediately drove there. My BP is usually pretty close to 120 over 80. After arguing with the woman, plus they had no free beds (gracias, amigos), she agreed to keep me in the "FAST TRACK" section. I got out of there around midnight. One interesting thing is that, after the doctor stitched me up, he gave me the utencils that he used, saying, "We're supposed to throw these out, but the only thing that's gotten on them is your blood, so take them. They are useful in your tacklebox"