For those friends on Facebook, you already have the news. But as this is where I should be writing stuff for posterity, here’s the story.
Thursday night I decided to make sausage and beans, crock pot style. It’s a recipe I’ve done a lot, and I really like it. Basically, brown about 2 pounds of smoked sausage. Saute some shallots and garlic. Put it all in a crock pot with a couple cups of beans and chicken stock, and cook for four hours.
Where I went wrong was in chopping the shallots. Chop. Chop. Ow!
Took about an eighth of an inch of my thumb off. Basically the skin, some of the nail, and a little bit of the meat
. It wasn’t quite as painful as I would have expected. At least as long as I didn’t touch the cut part that is. There was a lot of blood. I cut deep enough to sever some capillaries. Every time my heart beat, I could see a little gush of blood come out the thumb tip.
Called 911. Then realized I should just call a cab to get to the E.R. But once you’ve called, you’ve called. They called back, then sent the Fire Department down here. They bandaged me up. That was good, because I didn’t have anything to properly bandage something like this. Called a cab and went to the E.R. Turns out it wasn’t a deep enough cut to do anything with the little piece of thumb I’d removed. But the wound is too wide to stitch up. They cleaned it up, put a pressure bandage on to stop the bleeding, and gave me a tetanus shot.
Also, they gave me a couple of Vicodin for the pain. Turns out that Vicodin doesn’t seem to reduce my pain. It also doesn’t make me loopy or happy or anything like that. I do, however, get the nausea side effect. Not quite enough to upchuck, but enough to feel very queasy and want to hang out near the toilet. I decided not to fill the Vicodin prescription.
Other than pushing on the top of the dressing, I haven’t felt too much pain. The button fly on Levis has been a pain though. And I can’t left anything heavy because I can’t grip with both hands.
I changed the dressing tonight. I was supposed to change it after 48 hours, and then every 24 hours after that. Removing the dressing hurt big time. Felt like I was pulling off the skin, because it seemed to be glued onto the wound. Dunno if stuff had already started growing into the dressing, or if it was just congealed body fluids that wouldn’t soften in water. I’m not really looking forward to changing it again tomorrow. Hoping it isn’t as painful. Also, my new dressing is not as pretty as the one the nurse put on Thursday. If I had two hands free, I think I could have made it almost as good. But… well.
So there’s the story. I have pictures. I’ll get them on Flickr at some point, but I don’t plan on posting them here.