Wounded in the line of battle...
So I was taking out the garbage tonight, when suddenly a ninja assassin appeared before me, there to end my life. I quickly dodged his thrown shuriken, and leapt forward to face his sword barehanded. With a quick clap of my hands I trapped the flat of the blade, taking a minor cut in the process, and twisted to disarm him. He ran for his life.
That makes for a much manlier story than swinging the garbage bag up into the can and on the way down my arm accidentally trapping a tin can lid (on edge) between my wrist and the top edge of the can. The lid sliced through the bag it was in, and into the right inner side of my left wrist, producing a bit over an inch long and inch deep gash. Oops.
Hollie the trained EMT handled everything great, of course. I missed my ulnar artery by a hair, so I wasn't bleeding all that much. So we didn't realize at first how deep it was. We tried just washing out the cut in our sink and the water pressure just made it FLOP right open and expose my arm innards. Yep, time to go to the ER.
Since I apparently wasn't going to bleed out, they let us sit around in the ER forever (with a brief intermission for a nurse and a tetanus shot) before the doc finally showed up. He examined my lovely gory wrist and then, because it was so close to the ulnar artery and he needed to check to see if I needed a vascular surgeon to repair the artery and not just a sewn up cut, he PRODDED the artery from both the outside and then VIA my convenient new internal access just to see if he could get it to spurt blood. This was my least favorite part of the evening.
Fortunately, the artery was intact, so he shot the wrist up with novocaine (AFTER the prodding, you understand) and then left to get a nurse to clean out the wound before he stitched it up. She had me go over to the sink and pour water into it (FLOP, again) and then took soap and a sterile, spiny scouring pad and scoured around the edges and into the wound. She made as if to hand _me_ the scouring pad and have me do it, and I think I said something smart like "you want me.... to scrape inside?" and she heard the disbelief in my voice. So she did it. The novocaine was kicking in at this point, so I was feeling more consternation at seeing soap squirted into this hole in me than I was feeling pain.
Finally, the doc returned and gave me six stitches. I turned away for the first one, but really it was easier to watch the other five than to have just the weird pulling sensations to concentrate on. (These were my first ever stitches. Wooo!)
Meanwhile through this whole thing, Hollie was asking the doctor and nurses questions about medical school and how busy they are during Thanksgiving and was it okay if she watched the cleaning and the stitches and basically having FAR too much fun just being interested in the whole process. She was also great and comforting, of course.
And so that was our fun-filled evening.
That makes for a much manlier story than swinging the garbage bag up into the can and on the way down my arm accidentally trapping a tin can lid (on edge) between my wrist and the top edge of the can. The lid sliced through the bag it was in, and into the right inner side of my left wrist, producing a bit over an inch long and inch deep gash. Oops.
Hollie the trained EMT handled everything great, of course. I missed my ulnar artery by a hair, so I wasn't bleeding all that much. So we didn't realize at first how deep it was. We tried just washing out the cut in our sink and the water pressure just made it FLOP right open and expose my arm innards. Yep, time to go to the ER.
Since I apparently wasn't going to bleed out, they let us sit around in the ER forever (with a brief intermission for a nurse and a tetanus shot) before the doc finally showed up. He examined my lovely gory wrist and then, because it was so close to the ulnar artery and he needed to check to see if I needed a vascular surgeon to repair the artery and not just a sewn up cut, he PRODDED the artery from both the outside and then VIA my convenient new internal access just to see if he could get it to spurt blood. This was my least favorite part of the evening.
Fortunately, the artery was intact, so he shot the wrist up with novocaine (AFTER the prodding, you understand) and then left to get a nurse to clean out the wound before he stitched it up. She had me go over to the sink and pour water into it (FLOP, again) and then took soap and a sterile, spiny scouring pad and scoured around the edges and into the wound. She made as if to hand _me_ the scouring pad and have me do it, and I think I said something smart like "you want me.... to scrape inside?" and she heard the disbelief in my voice. So she did it. The novocaine was kicking in at this point, so I was feeling more consternation at seeing soap squirted into this hole in me than I was feeling pain.
Finally, the doc returned and gave me six stitches. I turned away for the first one, but really it was easier to watch the other five than to have just the weird pulling sensations to concentrate on. (These were my first ever stitches. Wooo!)
Meanwhile through this whole thing, Hollie was asking the doctor and nurses questions about medical school and how busy they are during Thanksgiving and was it okay if she watched the cleaning and the stitches and basically having FAR too much fun just being interested in the whole process. She was also great and comforting, of course.
And so that was our fun-filled evening.