Ow

Normally when I hurt myself (which is often) it is as a result of doing something stupid, or at least a little careless. On Friday all I did was wash some dishes in a very ordinary way, and I wound up with five stitches and a tetanus shot.

I was washing out the inside of a glass. I did not feel the glass break, did not feel it slice through my finger. So when I looked down and saw the broken glass and the blood, it took my brain a long moment to register what had happened.

The offending glass:


Changing the water from hot to cold, by rinsing it I could see that this was no minor scrape. Luckily my husband pulled into the driveway minutes later, and I had him take a look at my wound. Then it was off to the Urgent Care.

I found out that if you have a hand laceration you don't have to fill out as much paperwork while you wait. But you will have to fill it out eventually. Also you don't have to spend much time in the waiting room. I was quickly transported back to a room with the word "TRAUMA" on the door.

I am sort of a wimp when it comes to events that fall into the "trauma" category. Or even things that fall into the "needle" category. Whenever an unpleasant medical procedure is being done to me, I do not want the play-by-play. Apparently some patients love to be informed and prepared each step of the way (as in, "Now you're going to feel a slight prick as I insert the needle.") I prefer to look the other direction, chat about an unrelated subject and pretend nothing out of the ordinary is happening.

So that is what I did, during the tetanus shot, and while they numbed my finger and cleaned out the wound and stitched it up with what appears to be black fishing line. We talked about kids and the weather and my previous emergency room visits.

And the whole time I was thinking to myself: Now I'll have something to write about on Monday! And, I'll have to take a picture of that glass before we throw it away. And, I wonder if my readers would want to see a picture of my stitches?

Just in case, here it is: