epic gash gore and do-it-yourself amputations
a funny thing happened on the way to the forum... on the way to see chad, actually (making me late, meaning I missed him & if I can walk after all this I'll go see him today). the story starts with my hacking cough, which i thought i got from working on the shop (so much sanding & cutting boards) (after I get rid of this cough, all he'll be is a paint stain on my jeans, a mutual friend, & a sexy time-consuming lesson learned...but reflections have no place in my fun gorey story) but has stuck around tenatiously, especially considering i was running every day to fit into my derby skirt for saturday.
therefore i drank some robitussin so I wouldn't be hacking all over chad. being me & liking the taste, I just swig it. i rarely misjudge when taking it medicinally, but i am human, so it's possible. or perhaps the 4 ibuorophen i had taken before my run (only 4, and taken hours before the incident) interacted strangely. at any rate, while getting dressed i thought "huh, i've eaten but i feel a little light headed..." and sure enough, the first step I take after locking myself out of the house has me stumbling, hurling forward off my porch, throwing my bag aside and landing hands-in-mud and knees-on-concrete (I've said it before and i'll say it again...DAMN YOU DERBY MUSCLE MEMORY when i'm not wearing pads!!!!). After a quick 'what the fuck' moment, i realize 3 things: i'm covered in mud wrist to elbow, i am bleeding quite a lot from my exploded right knee, and i've locked myself out of the house (on purpose...i wasn't gonna need to get back in until after evan was home) and i will need to run all the way around back with muddy hands and a bloody gaping knee to get back in. no alternative, so i do it.
once I get inside and rinse off my hands, the question becommes "clean and bandage it or examine it?" I chose to clean, given my history of cellulitis, and then examine it. i put my knee under the faucet, tried to get all the dirt out by pulling back the hanging flap of skin, threw a bunch of hydrogen peroxide in it, and decided not to pick out the black flecks because i figured the blood and h2o2 would do their jobs. i'm marvelling at how it doesn't hurt at all, but i chalked it up to whatever cosmic combo was making me loopy in the first place.
then the fun part...pictures! I find there's a scrape that's so big and deep it's pushed up a triangular flap of skin that's probably an inch square and really thin on top, but thick over the deepest part of the wound towards the bottom, near where it attaches to my knee. yea, under that flap is just a scrape until the bottom, where it's a black meaty hole that never stops bleeding. The colors are great... while taking pictures, the flap turned from a fatty yellow to a grey red, and the hole from black to red. when I pull the flap away, I can see the meat tissues and fibers stretch and pull. I don't think i've ever gotten to examine such a fresh ans deep wound up close before. i'm not totally concerned about stitches because the majority of the wound is just scrape, even if under a flap of skin, and that gash isn't gushing blood. peroxide seems to be slowing the bleeding, and the flap of skin seems to stick after 5 minutes of pressure. So i neosporin the edges, stick a giant adhesive pad on it, and foray out, hoping i don't look too much like the clumsy cad i really am by the time i meet chad.
I get home, change the bandaid after more pressure, and it seems to be bleeding less. I am not gonna let this ruin my planned night on the town, so i leave to go to Cy's to eat panang curry duck with a dude who chooses to call himself stu, drink a straight bombay martini and watch the watchmen. jekyll's was gonna happen but i realized my bandaid is soaked with platelettes and blood (the martini and the length of the movie prolly didn't help). it smells only of neosporin, isn't hot or itchy, and STILL DOESN'T HURT (only stings if i bend it sharply) so i forget about it until morning when I see I've bled all over stu's bed (a spot on the bandage let go), so we decide morning is a good time for another examination (actually, he started pulling the bandaid off, so i had no choice). the bandaid comes off, and it's not really bleeding, but the flap of skin is now more black and grey than red, damn, necrotic. something must be done.
stu, an ex skateboarder who apparently has seen his share of fleshwounds, tells me to get the flap cut off & get stitches. fuck, that, i've got 91% alcohol, dressing scissors (kitchen scissors for de-dressing turkeys & roasts & shit), no health insurance, and a morbid curiosity, so i decide to do it myself. i leave it open to clot as I pick up more bandaids at walgreens (which took way too long...it started to swell with black blood behind the flap and leaked when i bent it to get in the car), and returned home to get down to work. I lay out my sterilizedkitchen impliments, do more cleaning, more pictures, and more peroxide as i discover the flap is stuck down...i wondered if that meant i should still cut it off. so i take a nip off the dryish deadish but still sorta bloody surface with the scissors. the meat is red and the flap bleeds, but it doesn't hurt, so i figure yea its dead. The peroxide and some picking at the top part of the flap (which was still yellow - i wanted to leave it to form a scab) with my sterilized tweezers worked to get it up and I started to snip & hack.
I get the flap off, revealing a smooth furrow scrape like could be made with a sharp vegetable peeler, but there's still that deep part is still under some skin. the bleeding is slowing the whole time, so i forge on, nipping the crest off the ridge of flesh where the flap met my leg. my game plan is to pick up flesh with the tweezers and scis until there is an open pit (strip mine!) or until it hurts. the latter happens, so there's still a gentle mound protecting the deepest gash part of the wound, but mostly the scrape is exposed. I picked out the last 2 black flecs. took more pictures, with more peroxide (yay fizz - looks like rabies), and spent some quality educational time playing with the meat of the wound (interesting texture) to decide if more should be cut and the pieces that were removed (total neat fun, I'm not gonna lie). it still doesn't hurt,sting, or throb. it's currently open to the air and elevated, and I'm currently only medicated with girl scout cookies and the internets. seriously, i'm freaked about the lack of pain. i must have hit with a substantial enough force to blow my flesh apart, but its not even as sore as it would be after a night of stripping right now. not really sswollen or bruised either.
I hope I can bout on saturday...
therefore i drank some robitussin so I wouldn't be hacking all over chad. being me & liking the taste, I just swig it. i rarely misjudge when taking it medicinally, but i am human, so it's possible. or perhaps the 4 ibuorophen i had taken before my run (only 4, and taken hours before the incident) interacted strangely. at any rate, while getting dressed i thought "huh, i've eaten but i feel a little light headed..." and sure enough, the first step I take after locking myself out of the house has me stumbling, hurling forward off my porch, throwing my bag aside and landing hands-in-mud and knees-on-concrete (I've said it before and i'll say it again...DAMN YOU DERBY MUSCLE MEMORY when i'm not wearing pads!!!!). After a quick 'what the fuck' moment, i realize 3 things: i'm covered in mud wrist to elbow, i am bleeding quite a lot from my exploded right knee, and i've locked myself out of the house (on purpose...i wasn't gonna need to get back in until after evan was home) and i will need to run all the way around back with muddy hands and a bloody gaping knee to get back in. no alternative, so i do it.
once I get inside and rinse off my hands, the question becommes "clean and bandage it or examine it?" I chose to clean, given my history of cellulitis, and then examine it. i put my knee under the faucet, tried to get all the dirt out by pulling back the hanging flap of skin, threw a bunch of hydrogen peroxide in it, and decided not to pick out the black flecks because i figured the blood and h2o2 would do their jobs. i'm marvelling at how it doesn't hurt at all, but i chalked it up to whatever cosmic combo was making me loopy in the first place.
then the fun part...pictures! I find there's a scrape that's so big and deep it's pushed up a triangular flap of skin that's probably an inch square and really thin on top, but thick over the deepest part of the wound towards the bottom, near where it attaches to my knee. yea, under that flap is just a scrape until the bottom, where it's a black meaty hole that never stops bleeding. The colors are great... while taking pictures, the flap turned from a fatty yellow to a grey red, and the hole from black to red. when I pull the flap away, I can see the meat tissues and fibers stretch and pull. I don't think i've ever gotten to examine such a fresh ans deep wound up close before. i'm not totally concerned about stitches because the majority of the wound is just scrape, even if under a flap of skin, and that gash isn't gushing blood. peroxide seems to be slowing the bleeding, and the flap of skin seems to stick after 5 minutes of pressure. So i neosporin the edges, stick a giant adhesive pad on it, and foray out, hoping i don't look too much like the clumsy cad i really am by the time i meet chad.
I get home, change the bandaid after more pressure, and it seems to be bleeding less. I am not gonna let this ruin my planned night on the town, so i leave to go to Cy's to eat panang curry duck with a dude who chooses to call himself stu, drink a straight bombay martini and watch the watchmen. jekyll's was gonna happen but i realized my bandaid is soaked with platelettes and blood (the martini and the length of the movie prolly didn't help). it smells only of neosporin, isn't hot or itchy, and STILL DOESN'T HURT (only stings if i bend it sharply) so i forget about it until morning when I see I've bled all over stu's bed (a spot on the bandage let go), so we decide morning is a good time for another examination (actually, he started pulling the bandaid off, so i had no choice). the bandaid comes off, and it's not really bleeding, but the flap of skin is now more black and grey than red, damn, necrotic. something must be done.
stu, an ex skateboarder who apparently has seen his share of fleshwounds, tells me to get the flap cut off & get stitches. fuck, that, i've got 91% alcohol, dressing scissors (kitchen scissors for de-dressing turkeys & roasts & shit), no health insurance, and a morbid curiosity, so i decide to do it myself. i leave it open to clot as I pick up more bandaids at walgreens (which took way too long...it started to swell with black blood behind the flap and leaked when i bent it to get in the car), and returned home to get down to work. I lay out my sterilizedkitchen impliments, do more cleaning, more pictures, and more peroxide as i discover the flap is stuck down...i wondered if that meant i should still cut it off. so i take a nip off the dryish deadish but still sorta bloody surface with the scissors. the meat is red and the flap bleeds, but it doesn't hurt, so i figure yea its dead. The peroxide and some picking at the top part of the flap (which was still yellow - i wanted to leave it to form a scab) with my sterilized tweezers worked to get it up and I started to snip & hack.
I get the flap off, revealing a smooth furrow scrape like could be made with a sharp vegetable peeler, but there's still that deep part is still under some skin. the bleeding is slowing the whole time, so i forge on, nipping the crest off the ridge of flesh where the flap met my leg. my game plan is to pick up flesh with the tweezers and scis until there is an open pit (strip mine!) or until it hurts. the latter happens, so there's still a gentle mound protecting the deepest gash part of the wound, but mostly the scrape is exposed. I picked out the last 2 black flecs. took more pictures, with more peroxide (yay fizz - looks like rabies), and spent some quality educational time playing with the meat of the wound (interesting texture) to decide if more should be cut and the pieces that were removed (total neat fun, I'm not gonna lie). it still doesn't hurt,sting, or throb. it's currently open to the air and elevated, and I'm currently only medicated with girl scout cookies and the internets. seriously, i'm freaked about the lack of pain. i must have hit with a substantial enough force to blow my flesh apart, but its not even as sore as it would be after a night of stripping right now. not really sswollen or bruised either.
I hope I can bout on saturday...