Flashes of Panic

Nicole points out that I haven’t really explained exactly what I did to my finger last week.

The quick summary is: I got a mandolin for my birthday, which for those who don’t know their esoteric kitchen equipment (I only had a vague idea what one was before) is a fancy rack with a blade that lets you slice vegetables easily. However, the nature of them is that you’re holding the vegetable in your hand and pushing down toward a blade, which is always a scary proposition.

And I knew that was dangerous, and yet I still had a moment of frustration and inattention, and paid for it by slicing off a chunk of skin about an eighth of an inch wide and maybe a half-inch long from right smack in the middle of the fingerprint on my right middle finger. (I also nicked the index finger, but that was just a band-aid level injury.) I don’t know how deep it was; not very, but enough to start bleeding quite freely and quite quickly. And it wouldn’t stop.

Fortunately for me, once she knew what was going on, A hit all the right responses. She handed me a roll of bandage (where that came from, I’ll never know) with which I wrapped any fingers with blood on them (most of the hand) enough to slow it down, and reminded me to elevate it. (I spent the next hour with my hand over my head.) She also handed me three ibuprofen and said, swallow these now, you’ll appreciate it later. We sat with it a few minutes waiting for it to stop, but when it became evident that it wasn’t stopping (there’s only so much you can bandage with what’s in the house) we decided I needed professional help.

I kept the thing elevated so long on the drive that it just about fell asleep, but didn’t drip blood on anything in the car. The ER doctor tried more or less the same steps we had, minus some of the guesswork and plus some better tools, but eventually he concluded that the best way to stop the bleeding with any confidence was to stitch it up. This required some anaesthesia to the finger, as well.

Because there wasn’t a whole lot of spare material to stitch together (I was thinking we should’ve used a patch, like you would on the knee of your pants) I’ve had the feeling, ever since, of wearing a glove where the one finger is a size or two too small. More recently, now that the bleeding has stopped for real, I feel like the stitches themselves hurt more than the cut; every time I accidentally bump the fingertip, I get a jolt like a static shock or a bee sting which I think is the stitches pulling. I will be very glad to have them out on Monday.

I’ll be even happier to have that fingertip back in use for typing, which will take a little longer. I can make pretty good speed now with nine fingers (the index finger is pretty much completely healed), but the other four on my right hand aren’t thrilled about all the extra work. I can’t figure out why the ring finger hurt unless it’s just sympathetic pain.

I have successfully chopped vegetables since then, however. But I used a knife and a cutting board like a normal person; that’s a tool I’m used to.

Technorati Tags: cooking, emergency room, fail, fingers, health care, inattention, stitches