Laceration Nation

WARNING
This blog entry contains graphic images.
Reader disgresion is advised.

It's 3 am, and I'm counting termites. It was a good thing they weren't mosquitoes.

I've got seven hours to complete an at-home lab about what kind of wood termites prefer (in case you're wondering, cedar and hemlock are equal in the eyes of a hungry termite).

There's one sucka that is showing me his thorax through a tiny bore-hole, but I can't get him out of there. I'm chipping and whittling away at the wet timber, trying to avoid killing the little guy.

The swiss army knife gets away from me. It spins around in my hand and then hinges. Only it doesn't close. My index finger stops it en route.

The actual words that escape my mouth are "Guys, I cut myself and I'm bleeding pretty bad" as I pace across the kitchen and into the bathroom. Of three roommates in the room, one doesn't stand up from the couch while another one says "go into the bathroom."

When the blood is running out as fast as the running water, it's morphin' time. And by morphin', I mean morphine. And by morphine, I mean hospital.

I wrap the bleeding bandit in some toilet paper and blue paper napkins (Me three days ago: "Do we have paper towels?" Roommates: "Yes, shut up.") and hop in the car with the now wide awake and concerned (they ask me to hold my hand over some newspaper to avoid getting blood on the black interior) roommates to scoot down 15th to the 9th best hospital in America.

I was worried I was wussing it up. The cut was on the front and back of the top third of my finger, but it could be real shallow. The waterfall of blood in the sink gave me hope that this was, in fact, a big deal.

I would soon discover that the laceration was the same as if you placed a blade on the very tip top of the finger and then sawed down into the finger, the blade running straight through, all the way to within a millimeter of the bottom of the nail.

And hanging out with this laceration in the ER is exactly what I'd be doing from 3:15 am to 8:30 am. In that span, I accumulated some fun numbers that could find their way into a version of "12 Days of Christmas."

• 10 sounds like tetanus (shot)
  
• 9 shots in finger
• 5 swollen stitches
  
• 4 wound cleans
  
• 3 room mates
  
• 2 halves of nail
  
• And a ridge in said nail for all tiiiiiiiiime

The roommates hung around while I waited, and try to get me some water (the receptionist said I shouldn't have any?!). They left when nothing gross was happening, but they're sorry they left before the fun.

The nine shots isn't a fair count, as it was four doses in 9 painful painful pokes (the 6th on the very tip of the finger near the nail, when I could still feel it. I pulled it the frick away). They just couldn't get the bastard numb, even though the bottom part of the finger was the size of my big toe. No exaggeration.

And then God spoke to me. Perhaps.

The stitches suddenly looked like thorns around the "crown" of the finger. The blood was pouring, and the dried parts almost formed a beard. My finger was a screen shot from The Passion of the Christ.

If you're interested, I've got camera phone shots of the black nail and the "stuff" that was poking out of the wound for a while there.

But I think you've had enough.

If you'll excuse me, now, I'm going to improvise on vicodin.