An Embarrassing Trip to the Hospital Emergency Room

The really sad thing is this really happened. I'm sure my name is emblazoned on the wall of the Emergency Room of our local hospital as one of the all time great idiots. Yeah, I'm sure they're still laughing.

It's really the fault of the person who designed our house. The furnace and air conditioning units are in the attic. I know, how stupid can you be; right? Of course that means that the warm or cool air, whatever is needed, has to be forced "down" by the equipment. It is not very efficient.

One day our air conditioner was not cooling even more than usual. Typically when this occurred it was because the filter was dirty. We had a "pull-down" ladder to climb up and into the attic. I got a clean filter and I was on my way.

I climbed up the ladder. After I was in the attic there was a "catwalk" made of several boards which measured about seven feet from the top of the ladder to the units. It took a pretty efficient "duck walk" to achieve my objective. After I changed filters, I made the difficult turn in that small space and began to "walk" back. There was a problem. If I moved across the boards going back, the same way I did when I came to the unit, the used filter would get my clothes filthy. That's when I made a very dumb decision.

I slid across the boards pulling myself with my right hand. There were a lot of loose splinters. I screamed for my wife to call an ambulance. I could barely move. I hobbled down the ladder and fell on my stomach and awaited the ambulance. Three paramedics came into my home. I laid there and had the pleasure of listening to one radio the hospital and say "Yeah we've got a guy here with about fifty very large splinters in his butt". He tried not to laugh but his voice cracked at least three times.

I remember the ride to the hospital mostly because the two guys in the front of the ambulance were laughing so hard the laughter pierced even the noise of all the machinery in the back of the ambulance. I felt like a complete fool as I faced the floor on the stretcher.