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Content Warning:

THIS BLOG WILL CONTAIN AN IMAGE OF A BLEEDING WOUND I SUSTAINED

If seeing blood is a concern for you, I apologize. Perhaps the next blog will be better suited to your tastes 😁

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How have you been?

I hope you're all well and have had an incredible and productive week.

I hope you achieved your weekly goals and ended it on a high note! 👍

Maybe it's not such a common practice, but at the start of each working week I like to set one or two goals that I could accomplish by the weekend. It varies, of course. It tends to shift around but I seem to arrive to a handful of familiar ones every time.

• Think of a project that aids my job and hopefully finish by the end of the week.
• Have my laundry done before the weekend.
• Set out next week's meal plan.
• Set and meet an exercise quota.
• Have a set of blog ideas ready a week in advance.

Pretty mundane stuff really, though I find that when I deliberately set myself tasks and accomplish them, it fills me with a sense of pride.

Pretty good for the self esteem 💪

Anyway - aside from that.

Let me give you an update on how I have been.

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Guys, I'm not feeling so hot. 🤢

(this is where I would take a miserable selfie, but maybe next time)

In fact, I'm feeling so crook that I had to call off from work yesterday.

I don't know about you, but not going in to work is one of the worst feelings in the world.

IT's something I absolutely hate - but something I had to do.

Why?

Well, it's hard to go to go to work and be productive when a subdermal cyst sitting on your spine becomes inflamed to the point where you can't stand.

My god the pain was unbelievable

I wont go into much detail regarding my illness, that's not what this blog is about, lol.

This blog is to explain WHY calling out is such a big deal for me.

So! Without further delay.

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The Night I Got Shot

I added that last bit on the title to make it a little less click baity, I you appreciate it 😆

To set the scene!

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During 2016 I had decided that I would start riding my bicycle to work as a means of guaranteeing daily exercise. This is something I tried in High School and was pretty successful at.

Now as a side note - I haven't had a lot of success when encorporating an exercise routine into my lifestyle, the best way I have learned to guarantee regular exercise is for it to REPLACE an existing part of my day.

For instance I replaced driving to work with cycling to work.

In High School I replaced catching the bus to school with riding my bike to school - and by doing so I lost close to 100lbs in the span of about 6-7 months. 😲

It was the first time in my life I had conquered my weight, that is, until my bike was vandalized and I didn't have the money to buy a new one. I was broke as a bad joke 😫

So the weight piled back on. 😞

Anyway, fast forward 10 years and here I am trying it again

The great news is that it was working. 💪

Again I began losing weight at an incredible pace. I began only craving water instead of sodas and coffee as my body was having to rehydrate, and I wasn't getting hungry.

I was on the track to conquering my weight for the first time in a decade, that is, untill I got shot.

A Wednesday no different to any other🤨

It was about 10:30 at night and I had hit the road riding at a good pace.

I had been riding for a month at this stage and my endurance was building up to the point where I could practically sprint the whole way (it was only a 20 minute ride...).

Like I said above I love challenging myself, so in keeping with that I was setting and meeting weekly cycling targets which felt great btw, extremely rewarding.

I had just turned out of my neighborhood and onto a road with very poor lighting.

As I normally do I hopped up on the sidewalk as to avoid any encounters with traffic. I sped past the second of two entrances to a neighboring apartment complex when a car pulled out behind me.

A Bee sting from hell! 😫

That was my first guess.

I thought I had messed with the mother-of-all hornets or bees, or SOMETHING.

I remember crying out in pain totally on reflex.

Whatever it was, it was MAD at me! All I was doing was riding to work?!

There was numbness at first, as though my leg was stunned by the shock of the impact. It didn't take long before my leg began screaming in pain, so much that I had to stop.

As I hit the brakes I heard laughter. I turned my head and saw that the truck that pulled out was driving right beside me, and as I slowed it sped off.

I didn't get a look at the people inside, and I barely saw the vehicle long enough to identify it. It looked like an old Ford Bronco.

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As I mentioned the street had no lights, so I couldn't immediately see the damage done to my leg.

I knew it was still there, that was a good start. I could feel blood pouring down my leg, and the pain was enormous. I remember thinking that whatever they shot me with couldn't of been that high of a calliber... after all, I still had a leg. lol.

I rolled my bike to the next intersection which had a street light.

I look down and this is what I see.

It doesn't look like much, but it hurt like all hell.

I first thought that whatever they shot me with bounced off, but the deep throbbing coming from the core of my leg told me different. I knew the BB was still in my leg, though I couldn't tell how deep.

So, knowing I had just been shot and that I still needed to get to work - what did I do?

If your first guess what, "You called the police" you would be wrong.

I took a photo and uploaded it to facebook 🤳

(The photo is the same one I showed above.)

• Seeking medical attention? Nope.
• Called my wife? Nope.
• Posting to social media? YES

Because priorities.

Oh, did I mention I still had to be at work?

Going back and getting the car wasn't an option, neither was calling off. (if you call off within 2 hours of your shift you can't claim sick pay) so guess what I did?

I RODE THE REST OF THE WAY THERE LIKE A TOTAL IDIOT 😅

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Arriving to Work

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Imaging that photo ☝️ only make the guy way fatter and covered in sweat. Oh, also imagine he's wearing riding clothes.

Also imagine him white as a ghost and with a bad limp. 😅 oh boy.

My coworkers greeted me the same as they do any other say.

Big broad smiles 😁 and eyes that screamed, "I love you because I get to go home now!" 😍

Which is the usual greeting for the night team. Everyone loves it when night shift turns up. One of the perks, you could say.

It kidna' went like this.

Supervisor: "Hey Simon, welcome to work!"

Me: Wheeling bicycle into the lobby "Hey xxxx. So, funny thing - I might need to go to the hospital."

Supervisor: "WHAT?! Why?!"

Me: "Pretty sure just got shot. I think whatever it was is still in my leg." I show her my leg which was bleeding far worse now after the ride.

Supervisor: "HOLY CRAP YOU GOT SHOT?!" now her face went pale - thankfully a guest had walked in and took her attention.

Me? I had already clocked in.

I took my spot behind the desk and logged in to the property software - not realizing I was still in my riding clothes.

I realized how bad looked then walked up to the bathrooms and changed into my work clothes.

When I got back my Supervisor was going frantic 😰 not realizing I had walked off - and standing in the lobby, with tears running down her face was my wife.

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(Okay so this blog has gone on for far longer than I intended, so please accept my apologies.)

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Intermission.

To reward you for sticking through this way-too-long story, I'm going to give 0.1 STEEM TO THE FIRST THREE PEOPLE who comment "Sucks to be you" because believe me, it did.🤑

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The Hospital

So Caroline was pissed off at me, as you could imagine 😅

After all she was still fast asleep😴 (she had the night off) and got woken up by my Facebook status update. She has her phone set to notify her when I post, and I guess it notified her 😧

When we got to the hospital she was a lot calmer, knowing I wasn't currently dying in a gutter somewhere. 🙄

So.

What do you do when the only place open is the Emergency room, you've suffered an injury and you've got no insurance?

Get into debt. Lots and lots of debt.

I'm not a wealthy guy, that should be obvious given the fact I didn't have insurance.

The first thing they did was hit me with an IV drip and clean the wound. It was a perfectly round entry wound with no exit. At first the doctor thought the same thing as me and told me that it had bounced off.

"No." I told him, it was definitely still in my leg.

So they took an x-ray. (I'd upload a photo of the x-ray if I still had it. Pretty sure it got destroyed though.)

Lo-and-behold, it was still there. Lodged deep, too.

The doctor told me it was too deep for them to extract, they would need to perform some pretty invasive surgery on my leg.

I believe he said, "It's probably best if we leave it in. To get it out we would have to" - this is the phrase he used - "butterfly your calf open" 😧 .... 😨....💀💀💀💀

Butterfly my leg to get a tiny BB, No way!

This is the comment Ieft on my FB status letting everyone know the update.

And there it has remained ever since.

Permanently lodged in my leg slightly behind my shin bone.

The doctor told me that due to the proximity of the shot, if they had aimed higher it would have puntured my lung - and if they shot any higher it would have gone right through my neck like butter.

I guess in a few ways I'm lucky to be alive, or at least lucky to avoid major life altering injury.

I can remember feeling the pressurized air from the rifle too, yet another thing I only recognized later.

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What does this have to do with calling out from work?

WELL!

I guess I now have a reputation for being a hard-ass at work. EVERYONE knows about this at the Hotel, it's practically a folk legend now. Everyone has spoken to me about it, and I've developed a reputation I didn't ask for.

So now whenever I am feeling sick, like today, I feel horrible when I call.

"You mean you can ride to work, get dressed and ready to complete your shift with a gunshot wound - but a little sore back stops you?"

It's as humiliating as it sounds, and because of that I get anxiety whenever I think about staying home.

I hate putting up with the shit talk from my colleagues when I return to work, but it's something I'll never avoid I think.

Because of that I only call out when I physically cannot walk - but when I tell them that it really makes no difference.

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Thanks for reading!

And indulging me on an otherwise terrible day for me.

Writing helps me escape the pain in my back for a few hours, of that I am very thankful.

If you found this entertaining, please chuck us an upvote!

Thanks again, and take care everyone! 👋

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