Clumsy Oaf! Now Look What You've Done!

Ow ow ow! Last night I was slicing up stuff for my supper salad.

Then suddenly I was slicing the top of my left thumb half off. OW! Blood is flying.

I ran the tap over it. It kept bleeding. I wadded a paper towel over it. It kept bleeding. I cursed at it. It kept bleeding.

I lurched upstairs, washed my hands, dabbed Bacitracin onto the wound, wiped the blood spatters out of the sink with a reddening wad of paper towel over the thumb, wrapped the biggest Band-Aid I could find over it, and watched more blood seep out still. Yup, it's not going to stop with home remedies. Time to go visit the friendly folks at the emergency room. And here I am, already in my nightgown and robe for a quiet evening of supper munching and TV watching.

More cursing my clumsy stupidity as I rip off the nightclothes, struggle one-and-a-half-handed into going-to-the-hospital clothes, and stomp back downstairs and into the car. I drive to Beverly Hospital with my paper-towel-wadded left thumb sticking up mournfully from the steering wheel. At the hospital, the Misfortune Gods decide to take pity on me -- there's an open spot on the first level of the parking garage!

Once inside the hospital, things aren't too bad. I get the intake done by the triage nurse reasonably quickly, have time for several pages of reading on my phone's Kindle app back out in the waiting room, then get led off to an exam room where in decently short order a cheerful doctor helps me peel off the layers of protection I'd applied and examines the damaged appendage. By now it's stopped actively bleeding and is contenting itself with the occasional ooze, so after he cleans it he decides not to stitch it. Instead, he applies several coatings of surgical glue. I'm departing, instruction sheet stuffed in my purse and thumb held carefully aside, in about two hours from arrival.

By now it's too late to stop anywhere for something hot to eat (hey, it's 9:00 p.m. on a Sunday out here in the sticks; the few sidewalks are already rolled up for the night) other than a lone McDonald's, so I content myself when I get home with salty snacks and chocolate. I manage to find a gigantic Band-Aid, 3x4-inch, and get it folded over the thumb so that the fold sits just above the top of the digit while the bottom adheres below the first joint. Thumb armor! This makes life marginally more awkward than trying to remember Don't Touch Anything With That Thing, but works better. After a few hours of quietly mindless enjoyment before the TV, it's off to bed.

This morning, the damn thing is still prone to slight oozing if I happen to bump it on something but otherwise seems to be doing well. Looks awful, but I think I'll live. I'm supposed to avoid getting the thumb wet, lest it undo the surgical glue, so for feeding the cats and then cleaning their litter boxes I pulled on a pair of examining gloves. Worked fine. I've currently got a little latex finger cot on over it -- and yes, it does look silly, like I'm wearing the world's smallest Trojan over it, but it's less clumsy than going back to the mega-Band-Aid.

And I'm still pissed at myself. Clumsy oaf!