How good are you in emergencies?

Last week it was extremely hot. There was a thunderstorm on Sunday morning and the temperature went down a bit for the day. Monday it was hot again but yesterday it started changing and there were some black clouds building up in the late afternoon.

During the night, I woke up because Aischa, out Yorkshire terrier, crept up on us. She is not normally frightened of thunder but it was particularly bad at that moment. She was not overly frightened but she wanted some comforting. The lightening was quite something – it went from one side of the valley to the other and it seemed to go on forever. I also realized that the electricity had tripped again because my alarm clock, which is electric, did not work.

The next time I woke up it was to the sound of breaking glass, thunder, lightning and the hammering of heavy rain on the roof. I realized that Alan had gotten up to close all the windows and I decided to see what I could do and to use the toilet. As there was no light, I could not see what Alan was doing. He came into the bathroom and said he had trodden on some glass and had to stand on the bathroom tiles instead of the wooden floor on the landing. With the next flash of lightning, I got the shock of my life because I could see he was standing in a pool of blood.

I am not very good in emergencies. I either panic or my mind goes completely blank and somebody has to tell me what to do. Alan told me to give him a towel to put around his foot, which I did. I asked him if he could sit somewhere and hold his leg up to stop the bleeding. He somehow got to the landing to sit on the rug and told me to start cleaning the floor first. To do that, I had to go down to the cellar to get the bucket and floor cloth. When I came to the ground floor and pressed the light switch, I was pleased to find out that the ceiling lights at least on that floor worked. There was no electricity on the sockets because I could see a blank screen on the telephone and I could not hear the whirring of the fridge. The ceiling lights in the cellar worked as well so there was no problem getting to the consumer unit and push the only switch that was down, up again.

Coming back upstairs again, I saw Alan half-lying half sitting on a blood soaked rug, holding up his leg and Aischa next to him, licking alternatively Alan and the blood on the rug. I could also see what had happened. On Sunday we had 11 people around for late lunch/early dinner and  when we have more than 6 people we use cheap Ikea glasses which we keep in the attic and I had not yet put them where they should be but just at the bottom of the pull down stairs. Monday and yesterday, it was just too hot to go into the attic. In his hurry to get to the window, he did not see the glasses in the dark, stumbled into them, broke one and stood in a large piece of glass.

The landing and bathroom floor looked like a battlefield. I was pleased I could do something else before looking at his foot. After I cleaned the floors, I found some compresses and a bandage and took the towel of his foot. It was not bleeding any longer and after all the blood I cleared from the floor, I had expected a very large cut. In that, I was disappointed. It was only about one inch long. I disinfected the wound, put a compress on it and wound the bandage around the foot.

Then, Alan went to bed and I first put the blood soaked towels (in the meantime, there were two large towels) in cold water in the bathtub rinsed them as good as possible and put them in the washing machine.

After that, I took care of the rug. I do not know yet what it will look like when it is dry but it received the same treatment as the bath towels (except for the washing machine) – I hung it over the side of the bath, held the cold shower on it, and rinsed all the blood out. I cannot see any blood on it now but how good the rug will look afterwards, remains to be seen. Anyway, that is the least of our problems.

After breakfast this morning, we realised that the wound had been bleeding again so I took the bandage off and had a better look at the wound. It looks quite deep and I think it needs stitching. I suggested super glue but he did not go for that! Therefore, we will see the doctor a bit later today.

On a more optimistic note – I finished a bag last Friday and sold it on Monday morning. How about that!