The Ranitidine Rumble

It’s funny sometimes how little things line up to land you in trouble.

The early July day was cool and bright, a bit blustery perhaps, but Persistence, my 30-foot Nonsuch, was well tucked in on the east side of South Benjamin Island, under a rock face that blocked most of the North Channel westerlies. I was grateful to slip into my warm robe as I swung out of my bunk in the stateroom.

It had not been the sun that awakened me, but the stirrings of my new shipmate, Joe, the little Jack Russell that my friend Mark on Last Chance had dropped off the day before, along with food and treats and the leash – “I’ll be back tomorrow as soon as I’m done at the marina in Spanish. And he won’t be a problem, really he won’t.”

And he wasn’t. But I am used to single handling, and I don’t have pets aboard. So this was something new.

Joe spent his first few hours aboard investigating every nook, cranny and crevice on Persistence, checking everything out with his cold, damp nose.  But after his shore visit the night before he had settled down on the port settee as if he’d always been around.  And now he wanted breakfast and another trip ashore.

As I rummaged in the cooler for his food, I clumsily knocked over a prescription bottle of Ranitidine tablets I had left open the night before, spilling the little white antacid pills over the cabin sole and under the dining table.  

“Shoot!” I said (or something similar).

I shrugged out of the robe to get down under the table and try to retrieve all the small pills before they worked their way behind the edges of the cabin sole. I was bare, on my hands and knees, backside in the air, stretching under the table when Joe jumped off the settee behind me.

“Woof?” he said.

                                      *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

The paramedics were great. They arrived via fast police boat out of Little Current shortly after Mark called them when he got back, finding me still out cold under the table, with a nasty mark on my head.  Luckily for me, the paramedics were on the water and close by when the call went out. 

I was kept in the Little Current hospital for observation for a few days, but experienced no complications or after-effects.

Not unless you consider the involuntary clenching of my ‘glutes’ now whenever I pass a dog.

                                                   – 30 –