Breaka You Face

I now know that it is possible to break one's face thanks to my younger brother Joe. Last night I got a call from him around 10PM:
"Um, do you know where mom is?"
"Yes, gone for the night."
"Oh....I may need your help."
"Ok. You sound funny, everything all right?"
"Well, if you consider having your two front teeth dangling in your mouth all right..."

Fifteen minutes later I met him in the state's slowest ER and saw what can happen when one human mouth collides with a hard body part of another human. His teeth were still in his mouth, but they were pointed the wrong way, heading back toward the direction of his gullet.
"Dude, your teeth are pointing the wrong way." I'm very astute.
He had gone to play flag football and in the process of catching the ball, had caught a head or shoulder in the face.

The charge nurse visited to get his insurance card and asked, "Did you at least win?" To which he replied, all deadpan, "The game hadn't even friggin' sthtarted. Thith happened during warm-upsth." Ouch.

After waiting about 45 minutes, a "doctor" came to see Joe's newly aligned smile. He pushed a little, asked a question or two, then left. About 15 minutes later he showed up with another doctor who explained that the first guy had called him to consult. Now, maybe I watch too many hospital-themes television shows, but I think we had been sent an intern the first time and he needed to check with the real doctor, who simply agreed with the first guy that my brother's teeth were pointing the wrong way in his mouth. They're very astute, too. One medical profession wearing a lab coat asked the other medical professional if an X-ray was in order - they concurred and left the room to proclaim it to the land that an X-ray was in order. Another hour passed.

Finally, the X-ray was taken and it was deemed inconclusive. Joe might have a fracture, but they couldn't tell from the picture of his skull in front of them, so a new picture was ordered: a CAT Scan. About this time, the first "doctor" returned and asked my brother, "So, there's no pain, right?" To which I'm pretty sure he received two incredulous stares from both Joe and myself. When checking him in, the charge nurse had asked, "On a scale of 1-10, how much does it hurt?" "8 and 1/2," was the reply, from a guy who isn't exactly a novice in the cuts and bruises department, and now a medical professional stood before us, 2+ hours later asking if it hurt. Finding his voice, my brother said, "Yeah. It hurths. A lot." This brought a nurse scurrying into the room a mere fifteen minutes later with a percoset, a glass of water and a straw. Time check, 12:45AM.

At about 1:15, with my brother starting to doze thanks to the codeine-infused meds, I wandered out to the nurse's station to inquire about the estimated time until the Scan and to bully someone into speeding things up. The appallingly chipper nurse explained that "CT was on it's way from our Natick location" and that it should be here "sooner rather than later, hon." She followed this with, "But once it's here and they take him, it only takes 3 minutes for the scan and another 20 to read it," like this was a great turn of events. I countered with a very tough, "So, another hour?" and got "At least" as an answer. I returned to my tiny, glass-enclosed world and watched the tail end of the Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson, a show I didn't know existed with a host I couldn't place (until Joe said, remember the Drew Carey Show, and I was vaguely reminded of the actor who had played the obnoxious boss). Fortunately, this was on later than usual thanks to the Grammy Awards so I had something at which to mindlessly stare while I waited for the CT to "get here."

About 1:45, a different nurse appeared in the doorway, and pulling a Nurse Ratched, said in a loud, grating voice that CT would take him away now. Joe was in a sound-ish sleep and I had been sleepily watching ol' Craig Ferguson say goodnight and we both jumped; I again wondered at the qualifications of a hospital employee. While my bro's face was being scanned, they decided to move us to a different room, closer to the nurse's station. I was heartened that this room had a rocking chair, but a little disturbed by the Finding Nemo stickers watching me from all sides.

My brother returned and promptely fell asleep again. At this point I had foregone the tv, figuring that anything on at 2 o'clock in the morning was just going to be depressing. The "20 minutes to read the Scan" stretched into 40 minutes and 3AM was staring me in the face. Finally, the results were determined and it was revealed that my brother did, indeed, have a facial fracture. I couldn't help giggling a little and saying, "you broke your face!" The nurse told him that this was considered an open fracture and that he would have to take antibiotics for 10 days to ward off infection (which she cheerily informed him would be an infection of the bone and that would mean a minimum of 8 weeks in the hospital with an IV drip). Anyway, the cup and straw were back and he swallowed 3 and 1/2 tablets of tasty penicillin and we were finally free to go after promising to come right back if there was any "hurling or whurling." I thought of doing that on the spot, but figured that the fastest path to my bed was to just vomit in my mouth then wearily smile and repeat that he would be brought to an oral surgeon first thing in the "morning".

Today, Joe got some lovely new hardware in his mouth, hardware which is apparently holding in his front teeth very well and ensuring that his broken face will mend. Kind of puts a new spin on that old Italian saying.

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In un-family-in-pain-related news, why do we continue to let this President get away with deception and blatant mis-handling of facts? Dan Kennedy of the Media Nation blog has a link to the story of a Bush campaign aid who lied about his education. Will this administration EVER be called to task on all of its betrayals to the people of the US (never mind the rest of the world)?