Yep, That's right -- I had a chance to earn the "Klutz Hall of Fame Award" this past Friday. I was out trimming some boxwood bushes that had kinda grown out of control around the bedroom windows, and was holding back a branch, attempting to trim one lower down, next to the side of the house. Well, that was a good idea, but it didn't quite work out. As I reached down to sever that limb, it was another limb piece that almost got severed. The blade from the battery operated hedge trimmer hit a branch and I got a "kick back." I sliced a little segment of my thumb back -- nothing that couldn't be fixed, but just dumb.
I called for my wife to get me some paper towels and I then applied some basic U.S. Army first aid elements -- pressure and elevation. Our next adventure for the night was the emergency room at our local hospital. For some reason, I happened to pick the same night as a large number of locals who needed some sort of attention. I was always under the assumption that blood, flowing blood, took precedence in an emergency room. However, I found out that those rules have changed in the past few years -- hmmmmmmmmmm. They were all very nice people, but the line-up of things from bug bites received while fishing at the local river to a sprained ankle to a fellow who had the flu have now trumped a bleeder. After the "triage" was done, we sat in the waiting area (well, actually we walked up and down the hall so as to stay as far away as possible from the flu guy with the bucket perched under his chin). This was a full hour. In the meantime, the rather large collection of paper towels wrapped around my thumb area was getting rather red and soggy. I remembered from Army training that hand, face and foot wounds are usually heavy bleeders and generally look worse than they really are, so I wasn't getting too worried.
OK. Now it's down to the emergency room treatment area, where I sat for about another half an hour until they decided I needed to have it x-rayed to make sure I didn't nip a bone or have any foreign matter in there. This went OK until they wanted me to take the paper towels off my hand to get their pictures. I bled all over the x-ray plates, the table I had to put my hand on, and the floor. They said everything was OK, and cleaned up the mess. At this point, the paper towels were completely useless, and they gave me a couple of wet wash clothes. These worked fine.
Shortly after this, a nurse practitioner came in, took a couple of looks the thumb, and laid out a plan to get it all sewn up and on its way to recovery. She did a nice job, even with the numbing needle and the stitching. Only needed five of them. She said it is better to use fewer than more because it somehow makes it heal faster or better.
Once I got everything cleaned up, I saw that the cut ran down my thumb behind my thumbnail. Kinda like filleting it. Not very bad at all, just a bleeder. Check this out.
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Earlier that day, I spent a couple of hours working with the chain saw, cutting up tree limbs and such. Given the choice between the two, if I was going to get whacked by something, I would pick the hedge trimmer over the chain saw every time. I also learned some valuable lessons -- wear my gloves when doing this work, and don't try to cut areas that you cannot see. Safety rules!
Better a thousand times careful than once sliced.
Hooah
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