Blood and more blood

First I want to warn you that I will be posting a picture of my stitches. If you're squeamish, turn back now. You've had a fair warning.

A few weeks ago I bought what I thought was a good investment. I'm not so sure about that now. It is called a chef's envy and I got it for pretty cheep with lots of extras. I had only used it a few times but when I used it I loved it. Until yesterday.

I decided to have salad for dinner when I got off work. While my kids were whining that they didn't want salad I was getting everything out and ready for it. I had everything out and just needed to start cutting the cucumber. So when you use this dangerous contraption you secure what you're cutting into the "cowboy hat." There are little prongs to keep whatever you're killing in place, and the top moves up and down so you can push everything closer to the blade with each swipe.

Here's the cowboy hat from the top.



So you can see what I'm talking about. It looks like a hat. So underneath I had stabbed the cucumber and was sliding the whole thing across the blade:



And just for the hell of it, here are the two together for those of you who need a visual.



So I was slicing away, going pretty fast thinking I was all cool that I was going to slice a whole cucumber in under a minute. Then you can probably guess what happened. I cut my finger. For whatever reason, the blade decided just at that moment that it didn't want to be sharp anymore so the cucumber stopped halfway through the slice while my hand kept going.

At first I thought it was just a little cut, maybe like a papercut. It didn't even start bleeding for a little bit and my brain hadn't processed that a hunk of my flesh was gone. Then it started hurting like I cut my whole finger off and the blood started pouring out so fast I couldn't get a good look at how bad I hurt myself. I did what I could to keep myself calm because I didn't want to freak out in front of the girls and scare them to death. I put a napkin on my finger and squeezed it while it was above my head. I needed another napkin quickly and I waited about 5 minutes to get it to stop bleeding but it didn't even slow down. I sent my oldest daughter downstairs to tell my mom that I needed her to watch my kids so I could go to the hospital because it was late enough that all the urgent care places were closed.

But instead of driving myself, my mom drove me while my dad watched the kids. The people at the hospital asked me over and over how it happened. Like they didn't believe me, or they couldn't believe that someone could get hurt in the kitchen. It got really annoying. Then the ER doctor came to look at my finger and he started squeezing it which almost brought me to tears. Finally they came and gave me a shot to numb my finger. I've been through 4 pretty traumatic and painful csections so I'm pretty good with pain. I would rather have another csection than to cut myself again. It is painful, so very painful. After they got me numb they took their time. They had someone come clean it and wrap it up to wait to get my stitches.

Then about an hour after that the nurse came in and undid the wrap and told me the doctor was going to be in soon. She should have checked with the doctor because I sat there bleeding all over for the next 20 minutes. Since I was numb I didn't mind waiting all that much but without the bandage on I couldn't keep my hand above heart level without getting blood everywhere. So after bleeding everywhere and having blood all over my freshly cleaned finger the doctor came in to sew me back together.

It didn't take very long to give me 3 stitches. Then he instructed me on the aftercare and said that someone would come bandage my finger. I thought bandage would mean some gauze and tape. Nope, bandage meant getting a band aid put on my finger. I was given the choice between regular and snoopy and I figured that since I'm probably going to be making a $300 copay I deserve the snoopy.

So here's snoopy. Not a good pic, but I'm right handed and I can't do anything with my left, including taking a decent picture.



And when I undo the band aid, here's my wonderful view. Warning: this is the picture of the stitches that I warned you about. Don't say you weren't warned. Personally, I'm morbid and this kind of thing doesn't bother me so I'm posting it. Hell, I even watched my finger get sewn up.



I don't know why my thumbnail is yellow. It isn't yellow in real life.

Luckily the doctor used the long acting lidocaine and my finger didn't wake me up from pain until about 5am. It has been hell today, and the tylenol and motrin are not working all that great.

My other blood story is my 6 year old daughter's story. We were out of milk so I stopped at the store and got a few things that would be easy to make until I'm healed enough to not be in constant pain. While we were at the checkout my daughter bit some plastic to open it (mom of the year award here) and started crying. She had been whining all day so I didn't think anything of it until I looked at her and her mouth was full of blood and it was starting to run down her chin. Fabulous. Turns out a tooth that wasn't very loose at all had caught on the plastic and had been ripped out. So we got to go into the public bathroom and clean up her mouth. Yum.

Oh, and the toothfairy is too hurt to go to the bank to leave her money under her pillow so she's going to be getting a bunch of pennies and nickles for her bank. It'll look like she got more money anyway than to have a paper bill. Just as long as the tooth fairy remembers anyway.

I also had a horrible time clothes shopping today but that will have to be another blog. Typing with only one pinkie while trying not to move your hand too much to keep the pain down is a little hard. So you'll just have to wait until it doesn't hurt so damn much. Besides, I have to go get into my bank and count a bunch of pennies.