Had A Little Owie

Hoo boy, I had quite a week! It started out with Halloween, my least favorite holiday, and wild little preschoolers on sugar and adrenaline highs, and it ended with an emergency department visit. For the record, no relationship between the littles and the emergency, but Imma take that little visit and drag it out to give me my Ten Things of Thankful this week:

Just an hour or so before the fiasco began....

1. Thursday evening found me making an apple crisp for my co-worker's birthday celebration that was being held the next day at school. I overbought apples, so after I completed the apple crisp for Manda, I began making a second batch just for ourselves.

2. The apples were peeled, quartered, and cored, and the next step was cutting them into smaller pieces. I had cut maybe a quarter of them when my left index finger grazed the edge of the knife blade. Just a little scratch.

The guillotine 

3. Wrong. Blood began pouring out of a cut in my finger that started at the edge of my fingernail and ran around the side of my finger on a diagonal. I stuck it under the faucet and ran cold water over it and made a stab (no pun intended) at assessing the depth of the cut. Eight paper towels later, I assessed that it was deep enough that I wasn't going to be able to get the bleeding to stop, so I went upstairs and very calmly told my husband I should probably go to an urgent care. 

My husband jumped up from his chair and went directly into panic mode. I directed him to find out what urgent care facility was still open (it was 7 pm) as I availed myself of the facilities before we left (I always have to pee in emergency situations like filleted fingers, tornado warnings, and earthquakes), using only one hand while continuing to keep several paper towels held tightly over the cut.

4. After driving across town like he was Mario Andretti (and with both of us angry because I kept telling him to slow down before we BOTH needed an emergency room visit), we got to an urgent care that was open until 8 pm. (For readers who are in the US, urgent care facilities treat minor injuries and illnesses and keep you from having to go to the actual Emergency Room at a hospital, where people are REALLY sick or injured).

My paper towel pressure bandage

5. I waited only about 5 minutes before being taken back to an exam room.

6. It was the very, very end of their day, but every one of the personnel I dealt with were very kind and helpful, even though I know they had to be tired and just wanted to go home.

7. The doctor determined I could be glued together rather than stitched, but I would need a tetanus shot if mine wasn't up-to-date (it wasn't). Funny thing, I got my Covid booster and flu shot a few weeks ago, and I WOULD have gotten my tetanus booster at the same time, but the pharmacist said I shouldn't get all three done in the same arm at the same time (I was instructed always to get shots, blood draws, etc., in the right arm because my breast cancer was on my left side). I opted to get the flu shot and Covid booster together, saying "I'm much more likely to get the flu than I am tetanus..."  

8. Bleeding still refused to stop, so the doctor put a tourniquet on my finger. I said it looked like a castrating ring, and the doctor laughed and assured me he would not castrate me. The tourniquet/castrating ring worked, and I was successfully glued back together (take THAT, Humpty Dumpty!).

You say tourniquet, I say castrating ring

9. I sat around for a bit, waiting for the glue to dry. The nurse came in and gave me the tetanus booster (which did not hurt, because she uses a smaller needle when she gives one). She then rolled my castrating ring, I mean, tourniquet down further and snipped it off, but what was left behind was a very neat but bloody cut around my finger where the ring had been. "Oh, no!" she exclaimed, "We really DID almost castrate you!" It didn't hurt at all, though. I was sent home with a splint on my finger to protect the cut and prevent me from bending my finger and breaking the wound open. 

Cut from tourniquet

My littles at school the next day were very intrigued with my splint and that I had an owie, and then each and every one of them proceeded to show me every tiny owie THEY had, real and imagined. It was a great bonding time.

Sporting my splint

10. Yesterday, I took the splint off and saw that the cut from the tourniquet had healed over and it looked like the scab from it was lifting off already. Hmmm. I started picking at it, and it all came off in one piece. Hmmm again. It turns out it wasn't a cut or a scab at all; it was blood from the original cut that formed a neat little line along the edge of the glue line. No wonder it didn't hurt!

Wrapped my finger in a shower cap and
secured it with a hair tie so I could shower

The glue is starting to wear off now, three days post-near severing (not really) of my finger. Still a little tender, but I can now type with two hands and tie my shoes, so all is now well! 

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