Archives: Slicing off the end of my finger - good times

This was taken two days later when I went to the
doctor to have the mesh crap removed. They
were laughing at me for taking pictures. I said, "Hey, it's
for my sadistic friends on Facebook."

~~ Originally posted as a Facebook Note on March 10, 2010 ~~

Okay, so here's the whole story, without the Facebook character limit. If there are any typos, please forgive me, it's a little hard to type without an index finger.

So, I finished Billy's quilt and still had a bunch of squares left and I wanted to do something with them. I decided to make a scrap quilt. In order to do that, I had to cut all the pieces into usable strips. I did just fine earlier today, using my crappy rotary tool. But it wasn't giving me clean cuts, so I opted to move to my good rotary tool when I was cutting strips tonight.

I had been working on this for about half an hour, was in the groove (despite the fact my blade fell off twice and I had to fix it ... that should have been a sign to stop, but did I listen, no). I make a cut, obviously not paying much attention and the next thing I know, I see something that looks like part of my fingernail pop across the mat. Oh, so I shaved off a fingernail, no biggie. Then I look at my hand. Uh oh.

I put my right hand under my left hand to catch the blood as I run downstairs to rinse it off (don't know why I did that, there is a bathroom not 10 feet from the room I was in) and wrap it before applying pressure. Scott asks what's wrong, I tell him I cut off the tip of my finger, and I hadn't even finished the sentence when he was on the phone, asking Mom to come over and sit with the Baby Girl, on the offhand chance she woke up. (We didn't see the point to wake her, but didn't want to leave Oscar in charge. He's been a punk lately.)

Off we go to the ER. The gal who checked us in was great. The nurse in triage was an idiot. She asked me if I smoked twice. Apparently I might have forgotten if I did or not in thirty seconds' time. She made me unwrap my finger to look at it, and as such, it starts throbbing again.

She takes me back to the room. We wait for a few and the doctor comes in. She's pretty cool. Accused me of making a mess of her room... well, whatcha gonna do? Once again, have to take the wrapping off the finger, the blood flow restarts and the pain returns. ARGH.

She informs me that there are no blood vessels in the tip, so there's no reattaching it. Great. And because it was a slice and not just a cut, she can't stitch it up. Translation: my left index finger will permanently be slightly disfigured. About a quarter of an inch of flesh on an angle. Eh, could be worse. Battle scars are cool.

The step she's going to take is put a tourniquet on my finger to stop the blood flow, and then she will use this stuff that will clot as soon as it gets wet. Coolness.

Off she goes to get her stuff. She's gone for quite awhile, so I lay down and watch as Scott reads comments to his post about us being in the ER. We hear the doctor just outside the door with the Physician's Assistants (which she told us she'd be bringing them in) and she says, "You guys have got to see this." No, I'm not kidding. As they walk in, I sit up and scare the poor PA, thought Scott said she was freaked out because we were laughing so much.

They get started on what they are going to do, and then she puts that mesh-clotting-magic stuff on my finger. She could have warned me it was going to sting like a mother scratcher. We get it all taken care of, cracking jokes the whole time. I'm sure they thought I was on something, but, well, you know what they say: Those who can laugh at themselves never cease to be amused. Besides, if I didn't laugh, I'd cry.

Then I had to get a tetnus shot, but the guy was awesome because I didn't feel it. Of course, the true test will be how sore my arm is tomorrow morning! Of course, I would have loved that guy regardless cause he brought me 800mg of Motrin, and for that I was thankful.

He told me we had to wait 15-20 minutes to make sure I didn't had a reaction to the shot. Unfortunately a drunk dude in handcuffs came in and distracted everyone, so he forgot about me. Finally Scott went out to make sure they remembered we were alive and they discharged me. The gal at the check-out desk asked us what we were laughing about the whole time, so I had to go through the whole spiel again, but I said, "Wouldn't you rather us laugh than scream bloody murder?" She told us a few stories about her nights in the ER, and one time she sliced her finger open. Good times.

Side note: They kept handing me forms to sign. But since I'm left-handed and I managed to do this to my left hand (because, oddly enough, I cut with my right hand), I laughed and handed all the forms to Scott.

Side note #2: Nancy at Sew-A-Lot just gave me a lesson on rotary cutting last Monday. Apparently I'm not a very good student.

Side note #3: Remember the drunk dude in handcuffs I mentioned? Seven cop cars in the hospital parking lot as we left.