Tuesday, December 4, 2012

State of the CW=OW.

Today's post comes in three flavors. The Good, the Bad and the ugly.

The Good: I am not dead.

The Bad: I MIGHT wind up having to push the release date for the next Starbleached book back by about a week. And posts here might get cut down to just a couple. And I will not be able to do a lot of other things involving fingers.

The Ugly:  I cut my finger at work. Left index. Which means I am currently typing this with a man down. And it is annoying and slow. But you deserve to know this and I deserve to vent.

Slicing my finger open was not the problem. I've done that before. The problem was that it was deep. Deep enough for bandaids to not work at all. I wrapped it up in gauze, tape and a "finger condom" (If you work in food service you know what this is) and worked through the rush for two hours. Then I changed the gauze.

Not only was it still bleeding, it was still bleeding just as badly.

So I ask my mom if we have gauze and antibiotics at home, because I will need them. She asks why. I explain why. She tells me to make the boss look at it. The boss hums at it, then decides maybe I need to go to the Urgent Care clinic here in town.

They are as useless as a screen door on a submarine. We go home. My stepfather tries to help me fix it. I wind up screaming because rubbing a deep wound is not helping. We decide to drive to the ER one town over, because it may need stitches.

At this point I feel like an idiot. I want to go home and put a bandaid on it, but I want to make sure, absolutely sure, that I don't need stitches. I go through the motions feeling like one of those people who go to the ER for a splinter or a cold, and I know everyone else feels the same way. The doctor looks at it, says "Oh, we'll clean that up, stop the bleeding and glue it back together. You'll be fine." He goes to a nurse and I clearly hear him say, "she's taking it off to look at it every two minutes."

No. I am not. But I have faith in the doctor.

The nurse comes over and asks me to take the gauze off so she can clean it. I do. I also drip blood on the floor trying to get my hand to the little tray. It's not a big cut but it is GUSHING, and by now it's been four hours since the slice. She tells me to hold on to my finger and not let go. Then she goes to the doctor and says, "You're sure you can glue that back together?"

My faith is shaken, but I hold onto my finger, gripping the painful part tightly, for fourty-five minutes solid. I do not let go. Not even when my right thumb starts screaming from holding unending pressure at the thirty minute mark. The doctor comes over and says "Let's have a look."

I take the gauze off. The cut is gushing. Pressure made no difference whatsoever.

The doctor says "Yep, that needs stitches."

I wound up with four of them. My left index finger is now in a sock-like bandage. I can compensate, but this blog post was a test of the system, so to speak, and I am not encouraged by my utter lack of typing skills. Tomorrow I shall continue editing come hell, high water or throbbing finger pain, but City of Bones, I am afraid, shall have a repreive until I get my index finger back.

 I am now going to take pain pills and go to bed.

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