I Have Staples In My Head

I have staples in my head.

Yes, staples. I guess they're more popular nowadays than stitches; from what I hear, they're a lot less painfull too. I guess I can't really attest to that, because I don't remember the last time I've had stitches, but I'm getting off topic.

Brian is fighting tonight, and last night he weighed in. I haven't heard, but I'm guessing everything went fine because his weight has been closer this time than any other of his fights. Anyway, he wasn't there for class last night after Muay Thai with Brendan, so it was just two hours of open mat. I was rolling for about an hour and a half with no issues. For most of the time I rolled with Karl and although I feel that I'm getting better each time I hit the mat, he still pretty much kicked my ass the entire time. I did manage to get a triangle on him, but chokes are pretty much useless against him, as he's very thin; you have to have it on perfect. I had to loosen up a little bit to go for the omaplata and, knowing it was coming, Karl wiggled out.

After a while, I think we both wanted to roll with other people just because rolling with the same person the entire night would be boring, especially if there are 10 other people there. Anyway, I wanted to roll with Joe, because I'm closer in skill to him than Karl, and he's much bigger than me. The reason I like this so much is because he's very difficult for me to tap, but he's not turning me inside out all night either, like...well, Karl.

So after a few minutes of rolling with Joe, I got rocked. In a scramble, I rolled to my knees and tried to shoot for a single. Joe, I think, was trying to drop down and maintain top position on me. Unfortunatly, the first point of contact we made was his elbow to the back on my head. I didn't go out, but it hurt like hell for a second. Joe apologized, and seemed pretty upset. I wasn't upset, but he wanted to take a look at my head anyway...sure enough, I was bleeding pretty good.

The bleeding did stop relatively quickly, but Joe had said that I was going to need stitches...then Brendan said I'd need stitches...then Nightcrawler...then some others. So I went home to change, not worried about the time between cut and stitch because I knew I'd be waiting to be seen once at the hospital anway. The wait wasn't too bad, but wait I did. Anyway, the doctor was pretty cool. He numed me up, closed the hole in my head with 5 staples, and sent me on my way.

He told me I shouldn't train for a good week or two, best case not until the staples were taken out (2 weeks). Sadly, I couldn't ablige the man. I will take it easy for a while, but if I can get Brian's approval, I have to go to Rob Kahn's seminar on Sunday. I also scheduled myself a private lesson with him, which came with a bonus free private lesson with Brian somewhere down the road.

Anyway, that's pretty much the end of the story...except I should note that the headache from which I was spared last night hit me hard when I woke up this morning. At about 2:15 today, only my first cup of coffee helped a little bit.

Ah, the joys of combat sports. First my ankle (which is actually healing quite nicely), and now this. I've never had a cut this bad, fortunatly, and I've never had staples before. Anyway, have a good!