I'm going to be playing catch-up here, but I WILL be back on track soon. For now, the story of my recent injury, an aspect of my past month:
Once upon a time, there was a very crappy manual can-opener. It lived in an apartment with three young, intelligent, beautiful women, all of whom were quite capable of preparing meals, even those with ingredients from cans. One night, the conniving can-opener went merrily around the edge of a tuna can, seemingly separating the lid from the rest of the can. But upon further inspection, the can-opener had left the lid and the can connected at three points, almost perfectly spread out around the can edge.
That's when the brave narrator stepped in. She tried to retrace the connected spots, to no avail. She tried to leverage the can open with a knife, but that only resulted in nervous looks from her roommate. Finally, she used the strongest tool she had in the situation: her right hand.
And as the can ripped open, a bit of tuna flying out in victory, so did her hand and a bit of blood (respectively). They say in the crucial moments of one's life, time slows, nearly stopping. That's not how this was.
After applying pressure to the major wound and tending to a minor one, I, sacrificing third person for less confusion and annoyance's sake, quickly found myself in the local Urgent Care with my roommate. Since I have yet to visit any medical centers in California, I knew I would have to fill out a lot of forms but hadn't really put that together with my injury. Thankfully, my roommate did the information, but I still had to give my signature six times. With my left hand, I took about 30 seconds on each signature, which for most things is not a significant amount of time; but for signing my name, it was forever.
Why didn't you just do a scribble, like most people do their normal signature? I'm not 100% sure, but I can come up with about 3 reasons: 1) My mom's signature was always legible, so I assumed that was the norm, 2) scribbles seem much easier to get away with as far as forging goes (light paranoia from my father) and 3) I just hate how ugly scribbles look. When you're trying to get ink to come out of a pen, sure; when you're trying to give permission for someone to take your money/not let you sue them/allow them to sue you, you might want to look like you passed first grade.
The wait was short and I was invited back by a younger nurse-version of George Lopez. While I wasn't externally worried or upset, his sarcastic banter kept me distracted from the new view into the my hand's skin and tissue organization, which I greatly appreciated. As I got my four stitches (first in my life), the doctor talked about how she had seen grown men cry (from the shots of local anesthesia) while children don't even flinch. I was in the no flinching camp, thank you very much...although there may have been some light left hand clenching.
Leaving with some lightly-padded, but still badass-looking bandage I went in search of prescription drugs. Oddly enough the trip to Walgreen's took longer than the UC trip, which was almost an issue as the anesthesia started to wear off towards the end of the wait.
In the following weeks I experienced some fun stitches adventures, such as writing, showering, and generally wanting to use my hand as a normal hand (who knew!).
The shower was the first obstacle. The next morning, after successfully wrapping my hand it plastic bag to keep it dry and hopping in the shower, I realized how un-one-hand-friendly soap/shampoo containers are. After a few slippery drops, I managed to open the lid by holding the bottle between my legs. Then I thought: "How the hell am I gonna measure this?" Without another option I flipped the shampoo bottle up over my head. Since my hair was already soaked, it was hard to tell how much was pouring: the bottle didn't feel lighter, and it was already halfway empty when I opened it, so maybe it's still traveling down the bottle?
After rinsing ten ounces of shampoo out of my hair, the shower got significantly easier. Drying my left arm was a bit of a challenge, but I was foolishly confident that the most difficult task was over.
In class, I quickly found taking notes left-handed was not a viable option. The cut was across my pinky's knuckle (palm side), so the bandage reached from the center of my palm around the back of my hand. Holding my pen like a chopstick, I could slowly take notes; but the bandage was like a small blanket on my hand, and my palm began to sweat, which undid the tape part of the bandage. Over the next few days there was a war between that bandage and I involving most tapes except duct. I surrendered in letting it flap open as I wrote or typed, but insisted on its placement otherwise.
In the first week, I couldn't open my hand completely, and then when I could, I couldn't place pressure on it (all the push-ups I might've maybe gotten around to...). It also very easily bummed into things and there was a slight pus incident - but I tried my best to focus on the re-full-use of my hand again, and the badass scar for which I would make up a better story.
When I went back into the UC after the appropriate number of days to have the stitches removed, I was told that I would have to wait four-five more days due to the sensitive nature of the area (this was after I waited two hours and paid a $40 co-pay).
Those number of days later I got my nail clippers, lighter, and tweezers and took them out myself. The end of the cut had come back together, but deepest part was still open, as the cut entered at an angle. Today there's a small scab in the center of pink new layers of skin. Still hurts if I smack something though.
And that, kids, is the time I caught a ninja star thrown at me by Chuck Norris.
