You Can Feel Death
Some time around three yesterday afternoon my boyfriend managed to cut his thumb off, just below the cuticle, with a ban saw at work. I didn't get a phone call about it until around six, at which point I sped across town to the ER. He was oddly calm on the phone and I knew he was probably in shock... He amputated the tip of his left thumb (with loss of tuft) and fractured the distal phalanx too... means he fractured the bone...
When I got to the ER he was still fairly calm. The girl from his work took off pretty quick after I left, and I sat with him. He went from laughter to despair easily, and I was terribly worried. When I saw his thumb... well I wasn't prepared for that... it was a bloody stump of a thumb, bleeding profusely on the white towels and sheets that the attending kept switching out. By the end of it all, the attending bet he'd lost a liter of blood, maybe more.
All they could do was clean the wound and send him home. He lopped off his thumb from the cuticle up, except for a sliver of nail that's remaining. The tip couldn't be reattached... and that really got to Red. While we waited, for two hours after I arrived, we took some gorey pictures and sent them out to our friends and his dad (who then started calling him 9.5 to try and laugh the whole incident away). He tried to stay stable while we were there and showed other ER patients his thumb, and we sent a picture to the security guard because he can get fired for taking pictures of the patients. The whole time he put on his bravest face and tried to stay optimistic.
When we left the ER, we had to immediately go get his prescriptions filled... the numb was wearing off. So percocet and a huge antibiotic later we were at home. The percocet does little for the pain, because he built a tolerance back when he was on drugs. We thought some pot might help, take the edge off at least, but it made it worse, actually. The mix of percocet and pot made him breathe weird and the fact pot makes your heart beat faster didn't help the throbbing pain... so we sobered him up and got him fed and watched Supernatural.
The whole time we were home I was freaking out. I wasn't crying or anything, because I couldn't. He needed to me. I can't be a wreck at this point. I have to be the one that's there for HIM. So instead I made him sit down and tell me how I could make him comfortable. It helped. I just wanted to take care of him, and this was the best we could manage.
He made me bring home the tip he cut off. We opened it up and took pictures and I, being the creepy person I am, examined it best I could. It felt like death. I've felt death once before, when I went to my grandfather's funeral and I touched his hand. It feels like sadness, emptiness, like it's sucking at your life force. It shakes you up, but I was too busy looking at the different kinds of tissue and traces of bone and everything to recognize that I have a totally odd fascination with death... explains the horror movie fanatacism...
We went to bed and he was in so much pain... on top of the pain he felt guilty for probably losing the promotion he was up for and how his being out of work will effect our money problems and... I couldn't fix it. I couldn't make him okay, take away the pain, or anything like that... I felt so helpless... He finally drifted off around 2. I was glad he got some sleep... I didn't between worrying and feeling like there should be more I can do...
I hope he's a little better today, but I doubt it... He's out with his parents... I'm stuck here at work... and all I want to do is go home and figure out a way to make him feel better... I NEED to make this better...
Links To Pictures...
Since maybe not everyone wants to see me holding the dead end of my boyfriend's thumb...
Me holding his severed digit... for size comparison. http://i40.tinypic.com/2q37y14.jpg
The gory side of the severed digit. http://i44.tinypic.com/102uhkg.jpg
His hand, at the hospital. http://i39.tinypic.com/2uh1vus.jpg
His hand, at hospital, different angle, with gauze. http://i43.tinypic.com/vzg4ex.jpg
