Well. I was planning to write about yet another day spent trawling through footage from The Force Awakens and writing Darths & Droids story planning notes. But around 5pm I started preparing dinner. For the dish I was planning, I needed to cut the core stem out of a whole cauliflower. I used one of my brand new super-sharp kitchen knives…
My hand slipped and the knife sunk deep into my left hand, into the fleshy area between the thumb and forefinger. It immediately started bleeding profusely, and I knew I’d need to get stitches as I could see the size of the wound. My wife had gone outside a while ago to walk Scully, so I was home alone. With one good hand, I rinsed the wound, but it kept bleeding copiously, so I grabbed a tea towel and wrapped it tight to try to stop the bleeding, then went next door to our neighbours and knocked on the door, said I needed to get to the hospital and asked them to contact my wife. One of them drove me to the hospital right away, while his wife phoned my wife to let her know what was happening.
I was triaged in emergency right away and the triage nurse applied a quick bandage to stop the ongoing bleeding. I was taken to the treatment area, where after a bit of a wait a doctor examined my hand. She said the wound was deep enough that she wanted to consult with a hand specialist. She used a lot of saline and antiseptic to rinse it out – very quickly, because it was still oozing copious blood – then she bandaged it up again.
After another wait she said they were scheduling surgery for me, so a surgeon could check the wound and see if there were any severed tendons or nerves or blood vessels that might require microsurgery, and clean it out properly before stitching it up. Then after some more waiting she came back and told me that the surgery is scheduled for 7:30am tomorrow, so in the meantime she would pack the wound and bandage it up to try to stop the bleeding, and then put my forearm and hand in a cast to keep it still overnight, and then I could go home, to return in the morning. She also gave me an IV of antibiotics.
Meanwhile my wife had arrived during all this, and just after 9pm we left and she drove me home. So, I’m now here, left arm in plaster, typing one-handed, trying to chill out enough to go to sleep soon after the adrenaline of the evening. And I have surgery to look forward to in the morning.
New content today:
Here’s hoping the surgery went well and wishing you a speedy recovery.
Sounds very painful. Hope you’re fully recovered soon.
On a very low priority level (your health is definitely top priority), maybe this is a good time for guest strips in Irregular Webcomic? 🙂
That’s actually a great idea! I’ll look into it tomorrow (it’s bedtime here now).