My Buddy Bob, a Margarita machine, and the Emergency room

BigUn

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Big’un@Big_un

February 13, 2025

My Buddy Bob, a Margarita machine, and the Emergency room

It was a Saturday in June, when my Buddy Bob came to the ‘Hacienda de Grande Hombre’. All of the women folk, including his wife, @The_CINC ‘s BFF, were over to the Methodist Church. They were having a Baby Shower for our eldest child, our Daughter Uno. She was pregnant with her daughter, El Presidente…

Bob and I were hanging at the Hacienda.
Bob says “Hey! Why don’t you make some of those Strawberry Daiquiris..”
“They’re Strawberry Margaritas Bob…” I replied
“Yeah, those.”
Bob doesn’t drink, he’s a tee-totaler normally. At UNOs High School graduation party, six years before, I had made a bunch of strawberry Margaritas. Bob got drunk for the first time in his life.
I didn’t have strawberries, but I did have a pomegranate margarita recipe I wanted to try.
Why not?

I had a ‘Jimmy Buffet’ ( I say Boo-Fay) ‘Margaritaville Margarita machine’. It was a blender that shaved the ice prior to blending
There was a large reservoir on top that held ice cubes, it would spin the cubes, which caused them to hit a sharp blade that shaved off ice, which would then fall into the blender. It was also 18v battery powered, that made it portable.

First thing I needed to do was take it apart and clean it.
I began disassembly.
Once I got to the ‘ice agitator’ I couldn’t remember how it locked so it could be un-screwed. I was moving it (the agitator) back and forth with my left hand trying to remember.
My middle finger on my left hand, hit the blade…
It hurt, I knew immediately that I had cut my finger.
I grabbed a paper towel and squeezed it in my left hand by making a fist, so that the tip of my middle finger was pressed firmly against the paper towel.
“Fuck Bob! I cut my damn finger!”
I then remembered where the lock for the agitator was. I disassembled the rest of the machine using my right hand, just the forefinger and thumb of my left hand. As I was still squeezing the paper towel with other three fingers.
We did find what appeared to be a smallish chunk of ‘finger’.
“Oh! That’s not so bad! Tell you what, we’ll finish cleaning the machine, make a batch of Margaritas, drink some, you know for pain, and fix your finger!” Bob said.
He went to get ‘Neosporin’ and a bandage, I made margaritas, with my right hand, left forefinger and thumb.
The Margaritas were delicious, we each finished one and went back into my ‘bar’ kitchen.
Bob got a bandaid all ready, with Neosporin on it. I opened my left hand, with difficulty. I had been clenching it so hard for so long that it was extremely stiff.
The paper towel was stuck because of the blood. I went to the sink to wet the towel to remove it, Bob was standing by with the prepared Bandaid…
I was able to remove the paper towel finally, we both saw my finger…
“Oh shit!” We said in unison. As I grabbed another paper towel…
It was going to require more than a bandaid…
“Ah… Yeah, I guess we’re going to the emergency room…” Bob said…
“Ya think! I’ve got to let @The_CINC know.”

“What’s up?” She said as she answered.
“Ah… Bob and I are headed to the emergency room…”
“What?!?”
“Yeah.. Well, I cut off the tip of my finger in the Margarita machine…”
“How bad is it?”
“I trimmed the fingernail just a little, but everything above that is gone..”
“We can’t leave you two alone, can we? What do you need from me?”
“Nothing my love, I was just letting you know…”
As she was hanging up I heard her say to her BFF “Guess where our husbands are going?” Then the phone disconnected.

We still had most of a pitcher of margaritas left…
The emergency room isn’t going anywhere…
So we drank them…
We had a new hospital with an emergency room that had just recently opened. Therefore we didn’t have far to go. We were still buzzed when we got there.

I walked up to the desk and said “I cut my finger…” holding my fist up that contained the ‘new’ paper towel.
“How bad?” The attendant queried
“Pretty bad…” I said..
“Uh-huh.” They responded and handed me a clip board.
“Please fill this out as completely as possible and bring it back..”
After I gave the clipboard back, it was at least another 30 minutes before I was seen. Which was curious because the waiting room was empty.

We finally made it into an examining room. Ten more minutes or so, and a bored looking Physicians Assistant entered.

“So, you cut your finger? How bad?” She asked
“Pretty bad.” I replied
“Uh-huh, well, I served in Iraq, so I’ll be the judge of that.”

I opened my left fist, and of course the paper towel was now fused with my middle finger again.
The PA sighed “OK, wait here, I’ll get some saline and a pan.” With that she stepped out.
My big ass wasn’t going anywhere…
She came back quickly, holding a squirt bottle, and a small plastic, half moon pan.
She handed me the pan “Hold this under your hand.” So I did.
She prepped some gauze and had it ready. She then began to slowly wet the towel as she gently pulled it.
“Oh my god!” She said when the towel came free. She quickly put the gauze on my finger. “Hold this!”
She said, and I held the gauze firmly on my finger.
“Have you done anything for pain!”
She asked
“Just 4-5 Margaritas” I responded
“Alcohol is a blood thinner you know?!?”
“I do now…” I responded.

“Here’s what we are going to do. I’m going to go and get you two Percocets. We will then place ‘bio foam’ on your finger prior to bandaging. There is nothing left to act as a substrate for healing. Most of the foam will be absorbed and it will take the place of your finger tip. We will also give you a prescription for Percocet.”

My middle finger was hugely wrapped for several weeks, I had a bandage covering my finger for several months. It grew back well, only I can tell, because not all of the feeling has come back. There is also a tiny bit of the foam left under the skin. It continues to shrink slowly….

Picture: my Buddy Bob and I in Tangier. Wearing our matching jackets we bought at the ‘Real Escuela Andalusia’. It’s where they train the white war horses.

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The Day I Retired

Its almost the sixth anniversary...

Some of you may have looked at my photos and thought; what young looking handsome man… He couldn't be old enough to retire …

Thank you Mama

Anyway, I am 60 and I retired at 55 in July of 2017. I was given a retainer for two more months in order to be on call. I couldn’t always get a reliable Internet connection and I can’t take someone’s money for nothing, so I shut that down in Sept 2017…

So you are thinking, what day in July did you retire? I didn’t really retire in July 2017. I quit going to work then…

I retired Thursday, around 1:35 PM, December 15, 2016…

Life was good for @The_CINC and I.

It was shortly before Christmas 2016. Tiny dancer, our surprise baby was a junior in college. We had a 4K sqft house on 7 acres, 40 miles south of Washington DC. It was our second house in 33 yrs of marriage. We had lived there for over 20 yrs. The final house payment was due Nov 10, 2017.

The CINC was at the highest point you can achieve as a civilian Govt Employee without going into the Senior Executive Service. When she was offered SES, the CINC had gotten to the point at which it would have meant more work, more time away from home, for no more money (because of the pay structure) for at least five to seven years. We also knew we wanted to Retire, so it made no sense to invest the time required for an SES position.

She worked for OSD, DOD, WHS (The office that runs the Pentagon, they are the ‘Landlords’) for 34 years. At one point she ran a division that had a yearly budget of $1 Billion.

She would be eligible to retire in April 2017. We really hadn’t decided what we were going to do. My top-secret NSA/DOD clearance was supposed to be coming through anytime. One of my specialties was encrypted secure communications.

I was a subcontractor for IBM and they were paying $50,000 for my vetting. It had been 2 years because I was a traveling consultant that didn’t associate with my neighbors… I was gone all of the time and I couldn’t see any of them from my house anyway..

Once that clearance came through, I could double or triple my salary which wasn’t small in the first place.

Here we were, at the top of our earning potential, few bills, house almost paid for, kids all gone…

Life was good…

Then Thursday, around 1:35 PM, December 15, 2016, happened…

I was in Birmingham AL, working at the US HQ, of a regional US bank that had been acquired by a Spanish bank. I was digitizing and updating their manual and electronic bank and treasury transactions. I had been on this contract for three years. The last 10 months or so I had been mostly remote, working from my lazy boy.

They wanted me to come in for some end of the year meetings and Christmas parties.

I flew in Monday mornings, getting to the office around 10:00 AM. I would work 10 hours Monday, 12-14 Tuesday and Wednesday, 6-8 Thursday and then catch a flight home around 4:00 pm Thursday. I would have 40-45 hours in 4 days by the time I caught my flight home.

I was sitting at my ‘station’, there weren’t really ‘cubes’, just tables with 3-4” dividers that had plugs. It was basically a giant open room, semi closed at each end by meeting rooms. My seat was near the meeting rooms. Behind me to my right was a large opening which led to a spacious elevator lobby.

The bank of elevators were the divider for another large working area. If you really tried, you could easily get 150-200 people in the elevator lobby.

I had just come back from lunch. I was trying to wrap a few things up before heading to the airport. A woman calmly walks behind me and says “Does anybody know first aid?”

I stood up “Excuse me?!?” She pointed to the elevator lobby behind her.

So I walked that way to see what was happening…

I am a trained first responder. I was a police officer at the pentagon and I was a FFX County VA police officer. I am also a trained BSA leader with back country first aid training.

As I entered the elevator lobby I saw an extremely obese man laying partially on his back. A woman by his side rubbing his hand looking concerned. Another man near his feet watching. I looked around, there were about 10 gawkers.

“MA’AM!”

I startled the woman to look at me…

“We have to treat him for shock”

First thing I could think of, get him flat on his back, elevate his feet.

"Go get that footstool"

That gave her something to do and think about.

I looked at the gentleman "Find me something to keep him warm."

I got him on his back. He must have weighed 400 Lbs.

I ripped his shirt open, put my head on his chest.

No Breathing, no heartbeat.

I took his pulse at his carotid artery to make sure.

No, pulse, his face was white, blue lips, his eye lids were partially open, his eyes were already clouding over...

He was already dead.

I looked up for a second...

At least 175-200 people were watching me...

I could hear people sobbing..

Where the hell did they all come from?

So I measured up his sternum, and began compressions..

If you've never really done CPR...

The first time will gross you out. I broke every bone in his chest away from his sternum. It sounded like I was crushing a bag of potato chips.

Another gentleman, kneeling beside me asked "Shouldn't you do the breaths?"

I was doing this for show. I knew he was dead. I have seen and handled many dead bodies. He was already dead, he wasn't coming back.

I looked over at the decedent's face, my compressions were forcing his lunch out of his mouth.

"Turn his head to the side, sweep his mouth, knock yourself out."

About that time a woman came over with an automatic defibrillator.

As I was giving compressions, I talked her through placement of the electrodes. She was so upset, she couldn't read the instructions.

She placed the electrodes, hit the switch, and audible countdown started from 15. When it got to one, it would send the charge.

I kept doing compressions until the Defib audibly said 'CLEAR', at which time, for some reason , I through my arms up like a touchdown. As soon as the cycle was over, I started compressions again.

I was starting to get winded, when I heard the elevators open and EMTs emerged.

one immediately kneeled across from me and took over.

I simply stood up, and walked away.

I didn't want to be there anymore.

I walked back to my station, and packed my stuff.

I was going to the airport.

As luck would have it..

I followed the gurney down to the lobby, one of the EMTs on the guy's chest still giving compressions.

On the drive to the airport, the shakes hit... I can stay extremely calm in the most stressful situations, but it takes a heavy toll later.

After arriving at my gate, I sat down, my cell phone rang. It was my boss from the bank "I just wanted to let you know that the guy didn't make it."

'I know" I said, "I knew that before I left, thanks for letting me know"

I called @The_CINC and told her everything. I then said "I don't want to die in a cube farm. Let's retire"

The Bank, and my employer tried to do some kind of ceremony for me. I told them not to, it was a dumb idea. If he would have lived it would have been a celebration of his life. He died, there was nothing to be proud of.

That was why they gave me the retainer...

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