I Heal Well
It’s not like I have super powers, and perhaps some of the credit should go to the French pharmacies and their recommended antiseptic sprays, but it looks like I’m not going to lose the tip of my thumb.
On Saturday, I gave a dinner party to ensure that Antonio and Anna finally received their wedding gift — an album of photos from the last three years. I still haven’t given them the card yet, because I haven’t written it yet.
I like to cook Mexican or Tex-Mex because it’s fun to prepare, delicious, and because it’s far enough removed from French cuisine that I don’t feel like I’m trying to compete with them on their own ground. I chose vegetarian enchiladas with a green sauce, but then I replaced some of the excessive cheese with chicken. I finally found canned refried beans (which I prefer to my home-made refried beans) and served rice and corn. I also made home-made salsa and guacamole.
The fun bit about salsa is cutting everything into tiny, consistent cubes. You may want to skip the two paragraphs is you’re a bit squeamish.
Anyway, Saturday night at about 18h00, I happen to slice my extra sharp knife into my thumb — right across and through the centre of my nail. Fortunately, the bone stopped the progress of the knife, but unfortunately, I was cutting so quickly and effectively that the thumb continued to rotate and I neatly severed three quarters of the “meat” off. My first reaction was “dammit, I don’t have time for this”. My second reaction was to put my thumb in my mouth. My third reaction was the correct one — blood tastes funny, so apply a clean towel with pressure and elevate. Thanks, Boy Scouts!
Alright, technically I didn’t hit any bone or slice clean around my left thumb. I just cut off an oval about five millimetres by eight millimetres from the tip, still connected by a chunk of skin and nail. Even a big chunk like that takes a couple of seconds to start seriously bleeding, and I doubt that I bled more than a millilitre or two (although it goes without saying that a millilitre of blood can colour quite a bit of paper towel). I realigned the amputated bit carefully and gauzed it from the first aid kit, and went down to the pharmacy to buy bandages and antiseptic spray. I needed to go fetch the baguettes anyway (to go with the salad).
The squeamish can rejoin the tale here.
At the end of the night, I peeked under the bandage and the oval was all white and puffy. White blood cells rushing to the scene to do their work, of course, or perhaps gangrene setting in
It’s Tuesday now, and I’m not even wearing bandages any more. I still can’t type with the thumb, but it looks like I’m not even going to lose the nail. It looks like everything has sealed itself up and knitting back together. Hooray for my left thumb!
The moral of this story is to always pay attention when you’re using a knife, use antiseptic spray on cuts and make sure that your mi-cuit chocolate cakes are cooked at mid-oven level to ensure a solid cake around a gooey center.
GKarlsen
Holy Smokes!!!
I can certainly attest to the sharpness of those knives — they are surgeon sharp (probably butcher sharp, too)! Forget all those as-seen-on-tv infomercials you’ve watched over the years of a guy effortlessly slicing through an over-ripe tomato… these are way sharper. But hooray for white blood cells and the body growing back parts like a starfish!
And hooray for sun. We finally have some here today.
Update — bandages normally help divide things in between things that go inside the skin and things that should remain outside. My body seemed to have formed a sufficient layer that I didn’t need to worry about it today.
I didn’t plan, however, for the fact that a few millimetres of fingernail were still only connected to my thumb via the skin underneath. And I’m wearing kind of a loopy sweater. So while getting up from my chair, one caught on the other. I think I’ll just go back to the bandage tomorrow.
Oh by the way, don’t read this comment if the thought of a fingernail opening up like a backwards trapdoor bothers you.
The real hero is, as Miss Muppet points out, the ridiculously sharp knife. A “clean” cut will heal up in remarkably short order as you don’t damage very many cells. It’s when you get perforated by dull or jagged implements that you are likely to see seriously body altering side-effects. Like that time I was walking through the junk yard and the leaning tower of “sharp, rusty old car bits” collapsed on my third arm. The poor limb was savaged by the non-surgical steel and after the gangrene and excessive pustilance set in there was no saving it…I was reduced to a “Two Armed Freak” as opposed to the wonderous (and financially lucrative) “Three Armed Super Boy” that I could have been. Damn jagged metal.
I think I’m going to be sick…
Is there some reason that you didn’t go to the hospital to get a stitch or two? Usually, that is the first course of action when cutting off a digit. While I’m relieved you have the genes of a starfish, what if you didn’t?
Don’t type too hard!
I thought about going to the emergency room, but I had a dinner party to prepare. And what does a stitch do that a good band-aid doesn’t?
Speaking of branding adhesive bandages, I only trust my thumb to the space-age know-how of 3M Corp!
Glad to hear you are healing well and quickly…how dare a cut-off thumb try to ruin your dinner plans!