Last week was one of those not-so-great weeks where work was a challenge and there were other peripheral issues going on that I won’t bore you with which made we want to get to this week ASAP and start all over again. As much as the aforementioned crap was on my mind, the biggest concern was when Megan fell down a few stairs two Sundays ago. She’s always had a chronically bad back but this last misstep really debilitated her for a while.
The scenario began when the Thai food we had ordered for delivery arrived and I went to pay for it. As I’m paying the delivery man, I hear a really loud bump and I yell “Are you OK?” The delivery man gave me a “Is someone kidnapped in your house and is trying to escape?” look. It turns out that as Megan was leaving the basement, her cell phone rang and when she turned to go get it, she lost her balance and fell.
Why was I concerned so much this time? Well, for starters, she is 4 months pregnant. Thankfully she fell on her ass and not on her stomach. But the bottom (no pun intended) line was the added pressure really did wonders on her back this time.
It didn’t get real bad until Wednesday morning when she was in agony and couldn’t even get out of bed. It’s not easy to keep a poker face when your pregnant wife says “I’m feeling crampy” at the same time so we went to the OB office that morning to make sure the baby was OK. It was the first time I had heard the heartbeat so that was a silver lining in an otherwise crappy week. She’s been going to the chiropractor every day and she’s about 80% back to normal as of today, thankfully.
Now, the main point of today’s post was not to delve into family matters but to actually discuss a reaction that I got while in the doctor’s office. Yeah, yeah, my wife hurt her back but would it really be worth an only child talking about that if he didn’t tie it into how it affected him? 
We obviously have a planet full of abusive husbands and fathers and it gives the majority of dads a bad name. Now, put yourself in a nurse’s shoes for this scenario. A pregnant wife comes in with her husband and says she “fell down the stairs”. It’s a classic cover story for abused spouses, right up there with “I walked into a door/wall”. So, while Megan is retelling her story, the nurses hear the phrase “fell down the stairs” and I noticed the (understandably) obligatory silent-but-defeaning “Did your husband throw you down the stairs?” look emanating from the nurse’s face. This was definitely not the time to make a “The bitch just can’t bake me a pie without fucking it up” comment. It was a moment where I wanted to explain that I didn’t do anything to her and that she really did fall on her own.
It reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where he was scratching the side of his nose while at a stoplight and from the vantage point of the driver next to him, it appeared that he was picking his nose. He made eye contact with her and mouthed the word “Nooooooo!!!!!” as she drove off and he never got to explain that he wasn’t a nose picker.