tipless finger

On Thursday night I sliced the tip of my right middle finger right off. I bought a brand new madolin slicer and was so excited to be using it to prepare dinner. So excited that I was not paying attention. My finger was all the past the blade and my fingertip on the cutting board before the pain even hit me. I looked at my finger and saw a flat white tip, and a second later blood started gushing. I really didn't think it was all that bad at first, but it hurt like hell and it just would not stop bleeding.

Also, we only have big old bandaids and one tube of neosporin as our first aid kit. Oh, and only over the counter tylenol in the house. DH kept asking me if I wanted to go to the ER and finally he stopped asking and we just went.

I do not deal well with pain, aka I am a sissie, and I have a bit of a needle phobia. I had to get a tetanus shot, and the DR took one look at me and sent a nurse in with one valium and two vicodin. Then they said to hang out, apply gentle pressure and lets see if it would stop bleeding. After two hours it still bled whenever I let up on the pressure, and teh DR decided to cauterize the tip to seal off all those little capalaries. He injected my finger in 3 spots with a hellova big syringe chock full of lidocain. This really took the edge off the pain, and allowed me to ease up on the pressure, which I was applying as a reaction to the searing white heat in my finger as much as to stop the bleeding.

The DR left for a while to allow the painkillers to kick in, which also allowed the bleeding to slow to a trickle. In the end they just bandanged the entire finger up so it resembled a thick white sausage, and gave me a prescription for more vicodin.

I had to miss work since I have a job that involves lots of typing. I am tapping this out with only two fingers on my righthand, and the little sausaged middle finger keeps knocking into the other fingers causing tons of typos and lots of backspacing for me. Also, the vicodin takes care of the pain but does not agree with me at all. I have no appetite, but if I take the meds on an empty stomach I get nauseous and I throw up. I also get really whoozy and sleepy.

So if interested, you can click here to see the bandaged finger, and here to see the finger today, after two days of healing. It's pretty icky but not completely gross, probably because the blade is so sharp that it's a really nice clean cut.

It took me the longest time to type this out! you never realise how useful your finger is until you can't use it!