Ouch

Back in July 2006, another significant event of the year took place. My friend and I were hosting our annual Indians/Downtown party at the Embassy Suites. You know how we do, multiple hotel rooms, multiple bottles of liquor, and multiple amounts of debauchery. We get up in the hotel and just chill, drinking and hanging out. I stayed back at the hotel with a few people just hanging and drinking, while some people took off to the game.

We eventually made our way to the stadium. After a few innings or so I got up to stretch and then…!!! I somehow loose balance clapping or doing some sort of a cheer on those crazy suicidal seating rows and go tumbling 9 flights of bleachers. All I remember is seeing the blue sky and the bottom of the seats as my face and body was physically traumatized and abused by every seat on my way down, just putting dents all over my body. I would have kept falling, but there was a guy standing who played a key role in killing my momentum for all the good reasons in this world. After coming to a stop, I got up trying to observe the surroundings and assess the damage. I felt okay, but then felt blood gushing out of my bottom lip. As half the seating section was fully focused on my heroic fall, I made my way up to my original seats in hopes of watching the rest of the game. Unfortunately, the injury was a bit more serious than I thought.

Andrey, there is a hole in your lip !!! We are taking you to the Indians medical office. I kept insisting that I am way too pretty to mess my face up and that I am going to Hollywood (you know I had to throw a little dramatic humor acting). I think I had them convinced to the point that they wanted me to go to the hospital to fix the mess. My dear friends and I caught a cab to the nearest hospital. We spent about 3 hours there or maybe more, things were kind of cloudy at time. They told me I had broken ribs and needed stitches on my face. I found out later that the ribs were only heavily bruised, happy to continue my 25 year streak with no broken bones. I ended up having 7 stitches on my bottom lip. Paul sat bedside while they were stitching me up and I kept flirting with the hot nurse. Meanwhile in the lobby, Katy, Craig, and Evan were recapping the dramatic experience with a humorous twist from my acting earlier. I honestly was in complete disbelief on what happened. It was complete bullshit, those fucking bleachers are dangerous. I just wanted to get back to game and felt really horrible that my friends were in the hospital instead of drinking and partying.

So we left the hospital around midnight. I came back to the hotel room, hardly being able to walk from the pain in the ribs along with swollen lips and face. After chopping some stories and laughing back on the experience, I said it fuck it let’s go to a strip club, the night was still young. We caught a cab and went to a Diamond’s Men’s club (free passes) and drank some more beers, my good friend Craig was in town so I felt bad and wanted him to have some fun. The next day I was in severe pain which lasted for about two weeks or so primarily because of my ribs. I had to take antibiotics, painkillers, and use a breathing apparatus so that my lungs do not fill up with liquid. The pain killers were awesome and we had some fun times with them over some red wine and Entourage. They enabled me to sleep like 14 hours a night. For the next month, I took it easy to make sure that I was fully recovered before the big South Beach trip.

You know this was just another wild night out. The year before it was wild too, but no one got hurt. I would have to say that it was definitely a turning point on my heavy drinking experiences, but honestly it was just an unfortunate incident because I didn’t even drink that much, I hardly ate anything that day and it just sneaked up on me. I was very disappointed in myself on allowing this to happen to me and loosing control of the situation. That experience has helped me become more vigilant about drinking nowadays.

Of course, I try to extract positive elements out of every negative situation that happens to me. I survived a near death experience which further goes to prove that I have angels watching over me and that this was just a minor disturbance to the ultimate reach of destiny. The whole time I was in high spirit because the people who really genuinely care about my well-being were there for mental and physical support, and could feel my pain while witnessing such a disturbing incident.

When people close to you feel your pain, they help you ease your own pain. They helped me smile and laugh it out.