So there's a part of my San Francisco Adventure Story that involves injury, blood, general nastiness, pain and even partial accidental amputation. I'll save that part for the end, so that those of you prone to the vapors can stop reading. (And also so my extra-nasty readers can skip ahead. You know who you are.)
My trip to the San Francisco Bay Area was, I believe, an outstanding success. I managed to schedule a surprising amount of productive-type behavior into five days, and I got to see a lot of what is an absolutely beautiful city, even when it's shrouded in rain. Which it was, by the way, beginning the day I arrived and lifting, I suspect, at roughly the same hour that my return flight took off.
The night before I left Texas, the Dallas area was rocked by tornados (tornadi?), so I don't know, maybe it's me.
I'd be the worst sort of jackass guest if I didn't stop right now and express my gratitude to Ian Golder and Monique van den Berg for putting me up (and putting up with me) for the duration of my stay. Five days is a long time to have a house guest, but they never complained and not even once gently suggested that perhaps I'd be more comfortable if I got a room at a hotel or one of the city's many fine homeless shelters. More importantly, their giant dog never tried to eat me, which I also consider the sign of a polite host.
(Actually, the truth is that I have something of a Bigdogaphobia, thanks to a horrible childhood attack by, ironically, the one breed of big dog that doesn't seem to bother me now, a Great Dane. I used to have scars on the back of my legs that told the tale, but I am far too old and fat to be able to look back there now. My thanks to Ian and Monique, and Goulash the Giant But Gentle Dogzilla, for being sensitive to my weird dog issues.)
The first night I was in town, I spoke to Monique's writing class at the College of San Mateo. If you're wondering what possible situation I might consider to be absolutely surreal, it might be speaking to a class that is studying personal narrative by way of my own book. Yes, my book was the assigned text; the students were reading it and taking tests about it and having classroom discussions about it. I could try to spin that experience into some fancy, existential parable, but in all honesty, it was just extremely damn cool to be me that evening. I highly recommend it.
I agreed to help workshop some of the personal narratives written by the students, and to be honest, I was nervous about it. I had no idea what I was going to say if I had to workshop an essay that was, well, bad. But here's the thing: none of them were. Everything I read had a real sense of voice; everything had something to say and a concept of how they wanted to express it. I was legitimately impressed, and only resented their youth a little. Damn kids.
The next day, we visited schools. You knew that already.
I'd never been to San Francisco before, but there are a number of people in the area whom I knew but had never met, in that nerdy internet way that was weird a decade ago but is just now The Way Things Are in the World. My signing at Book Passage in Corte Madera gave me the opportunity to meet some of them in the flesh, as well as see some people I'd met previously and at least one friend from high school. I know I'm going to screw this up and forget someone, but I'd like to thank Shannon, Ian & Monique, Annie, Kate, Alison, Halsted, Kara, Char, and the AMAZING Edith Meyer, who once again showed up with food, this time cookies, shortbread and a lemon loaf that I think I would have knocked down an old person to get to.
Most of all, however, there were two other special guests. Courtesy of Skype and a good sound system set up by Dana, the awesome events person from Book Passage, Julie and Schuyler appeared on my laptop and answered questions and generally charmed the pants off of everyone. So if you weren't there, well, you missed a lot of charmed, pantsless people. Your loss.
I had a great time in San Francisco, and I'd love to return soon. There's a possibility that Schuyler might attend a summer camp for kids who use Big Boxes of Words, although I might have to discover buried treasure or lost mob money to make that a reality.
I hope it happens.
Okay, I mean it now. Tender-hearts stop reading now. I'm serious. If you don't like the rest of this, don't leave me any crybaby comments. You've been warned.
So yeah, I cut off the end of my finger.
The morning I left for California, I was packing my toiletries and had already put my razor in a side pocket of my little bathroom bag. I decided that it would be a good idea to store my toothbrush in the same pocket (NOTE: This was not actually a good idea), and as I pushed my toothbrush in, it stuck on something, my hand slipped, and my middle finger (aka "The Bird") on my right hand made a rather abrupt and rude introduction to the little Precision Trimmer blade on the top edge of my razor, which if you're into detail, is that funky five-blade "Fusion Power" thing from Gillette.
(Because, you know, it has five blades. How could I use something that just had four, or even three blades -- pshaw! -- all the while KNOWING that there were five blades out there, PLUS that one nasty little trimmer blade on top? Get fucking serious.)
I just went to the Gillette site to see what that little top blade is called, and ran across the following line in the ad: "So comfortable, you barely feel the blades."
I felt the blade.
Now, before you begin to wonder (as you inevitably will) if I immediately went to the emergency room, well, here's the thing. My plane was leaving in about an hour and a half. You just read about the wonderful time I had in San Francisco, and also how many professional commitments I had there. I couldn't just NOT go, all because I cut myself with my razor, and not even shaving but PACKING.
Also, in my own defense (and Julie can queasily back me up on this), it bled. A lot. So much so that I couldn't actually see what I had done. It hurt more than I thought a cut should hurt, and it would not stop bleeding for anything, no matter how much pressure I put on it. But still, I just thought it was a deep cut, right? And when we bandaged it up tightly, the pressure made the bleeding stop. I figured, it just needs some time to settle down. So we threw my bags in the car and drove to the airport, my finger hurting wildly but no longer squirting blood like a Monty Python sketch.
It wasn't until I got past security that I noticed that the bleeding had begun again, seeping through the bandages like, well, like a poorly bandaged wound that really should have been seen by a doctor. If before was a bad time to go have it looked at, then sitting outside my gate with my shoes off wasn't much better. I found a bathroom, decided against removing the bandages (which I still think was probably a smart move on my part, and one that my fellow travelers and bathroom-users would probably agree with) and simply applied MORE bandages on top on the poor little Dutchboy-like original strips that were bravely losing the fight against the flood.
Surprisingly, this second bit of first aid (would that make it second aid?) held, and I made my flight without incident. It wasn't until I attempted to change the bandages before class that I realized how bad it was.
Because it bled again. Badly. And now I saw why.
Okay, so first of all, sit down. Then imagine the very tip of your finger, or my finger really, if that makes you feel better about it. Imagine a piece about the size of a dime (which constitutes most of the tip of your finger, really) and about the thickness of two quarters. Now imagine it connected by a tiny piece of skin. Now imagine it NO LONGER connected by that tiny piece of skin. Imagine it instead stuck to the inside of a bloody bandage, a small not-bloody circle in the middle of a brownish-red tragedy.
And if you're REALLY into detail, also imagine taking your killer razor out of your bag to inexplicably use it against your own stubbly face, despite the fact that it has tasted human blood and may just want more more more. Upon examination, you find that it is surprisingly not at all bloody, because when you cut yourself, your "Ow ow, holy shit, ow motherfucker OW!" reflex kicked in quickly enough to get you to the sink before any real bleeding began. What you do find is what appears to be a small piece of clear plastic stuck in the blades. But when you fish it out, you remember that most clear plastic doesn't have little fingerprint ridges in it. Then you sit down again. And maybe not eat for the rest of the day.
Apparently I cut it twice. One was the big cut, and one was a little bit shaved off the tip, waiting for me to discover it later.
So yeah. I cut off the end of my finger.
Now, I didn't cut off a major, life-changing chunk of my finger. I'll have a flat spot, that's certain, but I can still count to ten and Schuyler can still paint all my fingernails. Still, the cut went deep into that part of the skin where the nerves live, and they do not like being exposed like that. Two weeks after the cut, it is healing up nicely (amazingly, no infection, which goes to show that God really does protect children and stupid people), but you know what?
It still hurts. A lot.
It looks sort of cool, though. I'll leave that to your imagination.
My trip to the San Francisco Bay Area was, I believe, an outstanding success. I managed to schedule a surprising amount of productive-type behavior into five days, and I got to see a lot of what is an absolutely beautiful city, even when it's shrouded in rain. Which it was, by the way, beginning the day I arrived and lifting, I suspect, at roughly the same hour that my return flight took off.
The night before I left Texas, the Dallas area was rocked by tornados (tornadi?), so I don't know, maybe it's me.
I'd be the worst sort of jackass guest if I didn't stop right now and express my gratitude to Ian Golder and Monique van den Berg for putting me up (and putting up with me) for the duration of my stay. Five days is a long time to have a house guest, but they never complained and not even once gently suggested that perhaps I'd be more comfortable if I got a room at a hotel or one of the city's many fine homeless shelters. More importantly, their giant dog never tried to eat me, which I also consider the sign of a polite host.
(Actually, the truth is that I have something of a Bigdogaphobia, thanks to a horrible childhood attack by, ironically, the one breed of big dog that doesn't seem to bother me now, a Great Dane. I used to have scars on the back of my legs that told the tale, but I am far too old and fat to be able to look back there now. My thanks to Ian and Monique, and Goulash the Giant But Gentle Dogzilla, for being sensitive to my weird dog issues.)
The first night I was in town, I spoke to Monique's writing class at the College of San Mateo. If you're wondering what possible situation I might consider to be absolutely surreal, it might be speaking to a class that is studying personal narrative by way of my own book. Yes, my book was the assigned text; the students were reading it and taking tests about it and having classroom discussions about it. I could try to spin that experience into some fancy, existential parable, but in all honesty, it was just extremely damn cool to be me that evening. I highly recommend it.
I agreed to help workshop some of the personal narratives written by the students, and to be honest, I was nervous about it. I had no idea what I was going to say if I had to workshop an essay that was, well, bad. But here's the thing: none of them were. Everything I read had a real sense of voice; everything had something to say and a concept of how they wanted to express it. I was legitimately impressed, and only resented their youth a little. Damn kids.
The next day, we visited schools. You knew that already.
* * *
(photo by Monique van den Berg)
I'd never been to San Francisco before, but there are a number of people in the area whom I knew but had never met, in that nerdy internet way that was weird a decade ago but is just now The Way Things Are in the World. My signing at Book Passage in Corte Madera gave me the opportunity to meet some of them in the flesh, as well as see some people I'd met previously and at least one friend from high school. I know I'm going to screw this up and forget someone, but I'd like to thank Shannon, Ian & Monique, Annie, Kate, Alison, Halsted, Kara, Char, and the AMAZING Edith Meyer, who once again showed up with food, this time cookies, shortbread and a lemon loaf that I think I would have knocked down an old person to get to.
Most of all, however, there were two other special guests. Courtesy of Skype and a good sound system set up by Dana, the awesome events person from Book Passage, Julie and Schuyler appeared on my laptop and answered questions and generally charmed the pants off of everyone. So if you weren't there, well, you missed a lot of charmed, pantsless people. Your loss.
(photo by Shannon Kokoska)
* * *
The rest of my visit was vacation, really. We went to the Big Basin Redwoods State Park and saw many a mighty tree, and while I took lots of photos, it's impossible to get a sense of just how gigantic some of them really were. In person, it was "Holy shit, that's a big goddamn redwood!" When you look at the photos, it's more like "Oh, look. A pretty tree."
My last day in San Francisco was spent sightseeing in the city with Monique and attending a concert by the San Francisco Symphony, which was Monique's amazing Christmas present to me. The performance was conducted by Charles Dutoit, one of my favorite conductors who, with the Montreal Symphony, produced some of the best and most enduring recordings of the last thirty years. San Francisco Symphony performed Debussy's "Oh, look. A pretty deer.", Stravinsky's Symphony in C, and closed with Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, which is frankly a much better piece that R-K really had any right to compose, based on the rest of his output. Don't get me wrong, Rimsky-Korsakov was a brilliant orchestrator and wrote some fine music, by golly, but in Scheherazade, he really stepped it up. He did us hyphenates proud.
And of course, we visited the Pirate Supply Store at 826 Valencia, which (for zoning purposes) serves as a legitimate business front for the writing center founded by Dave Eggers. I bought pirate flags and a t-shirt and the obligatory eye patch for Schuyler and Julie.
(photo by Monique van den Berg)
My last day in San Francisco was spent sightseeing in the city with Monique and attending a concert by the San Francisco Symphony, which was Monique's amazing Christmas present to me. The performance was conducted by Charles Dutoit, one of my favorite conductors who, with the Montreal Symphony, produced some of the best and most enduring recordings of the last thirty years. San Francisco Symphony performed Debussy's "Oh, look. A pretty deer.", Stravinsky's Symphony in C, and closed with Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, which is frankly a much better piece that R-K really had any right to compose, based on the rest of his output. Don't get me wrong, Rimsky-Korsakov was a brilliant orchestrator and wrote some fine music, by golly, but in Scheherazade, he really stepped it up. He did us hyphenates proud.
And of course, we visited the Pirate Supply Store at 826 Valencia, which (for zoning purposes) serves as a legitimate business front for the writing center founded by Dave Eggers. I bought pirate flags and a t-shirt and the obligatory eye patch for Schuyler and Julie.
"Pillage before plunder, what a blunder.
Plunder before pillage, mission fulfillage."
I had a great time in San Francisco, and I'd love to return soon. There's a possibility that Schuyler might attend a summer camp for kids who use Big Boxes of Words, although I might have to discover buried treasure or lost mob money to make that a reality.
I hope it happens.
Okay, I mean it now. Tender-hearts stop reading now. I'm serious. If you don't like the rest of this, don't leave me any crybaby comments. You've been warned.
So yeah, I cut off the end of my finger.
The morning I left for California, I was packing my toiletries and had already put my razor in a side pocket of my little bathroom bag. I decided that it would be a good idea to store my toothbrush in the same pocket (NOTE: This was not actually a good idea), and as I pushed my toothbrush in, it stuck on something, my hand slipped, and my middle finger (aka "The Bird") on my right hand made a rather abrupt and rude introduction to the little Precision Trimmer blade on the top edge of my razor, which if you're into detail, is that funky five-blade "Fusion Power" thing from Gillette.
(Because, you know, it has five blades. How could I use something that just had four, or even three blades -- pshaw! -- all the while KNOWING that there were five blades out there, PLUS that one nasty little trimmer blade on top? Get fucking serious.)
I just went to the Gillette site to see what that little top blade is called, and ran across the following line in the ad: "So comfortable, you barely feel the blades."
I felt the blade.
Now, before you begin to wonder (as you inevitably will) if I immediately went to the emergency room, well, here's the thing. My plane was leaving in about an hour and a half. You just read about the wonderful time I had in San Francisco, and also how many professional commitments I had there. I couldn't just NOT go, all because I cut myself with my razor, and not even shaving but PACKING.
Also, in my own defense (and Julie can queasily back me up on this), it bled. A lot. So much so that I couldn't actually see what I had done. It hurt more than I thought a cut should hurt, and it would not stop bleeding for anything, no matter how much pressure I put on it. But still, I just thought it was a deep cut, right? And when we bandaged it up tightly, the pressure made the bleeding stop. I figured, it just needs some time to settle down. So we threw my bags in the car and drove to the airport, my finger hurting wildly but no longer squirting blood like a Monty Python sketch.
It wasn't until I got past security that I noticed that the bleeding had begun again, seeping through the bandages like, well, like a poorly bandaged wound that really should have been seen by a doctor. If before was a bad time to go have it looked at, then sitting outside my gate with my shoes off wasn't much better. I found a bathroom, decided against removing the bandages (which I still think was probably a smart move on my part, and one that my fellow travelers and bathroom-users would probably agree with) and simply applied MORE bandages on top on the poor little Dutchboy-like original strips that were bravely losing the fight against the flood.
Surprisingly, this second bit of first aid (would that make it second aid?) held, and I made my flight without incident. It wasn't until I attempted to change the bandages before class that I realized how bad it was.
Because it bled again. Badly. And now I saw why.
Okay, so first of all, sit down. Then imagine the very tip of your finger, or my finger really, if that makes you feel better about it. Imagine a piece about the size of a dime (which constitutes most of the tip of your finger, really) and about the thickness of two quarters. Now imagine it connected by a tiny piece of skin. Now imagine it NO LONGER connected by that tiny piece of skin. Imagine it instead stuck to the inside of a bloody bandage, a small not-bloody circle in the middle of a brownish-red tragedy.
And if you're REALLY into detail, also imagine taking your killer razor out of your bag to inexplicably use it against your own stubbly face, despite the fact that it has tasted human blood and may just want more more more. Upon examination, you find that it is surprisingly not at all bloody, because when you cut yourself, your "Ow ow, holy shit, ow motherfucker OW!" reflex kicked in quickly enough to get you to the sink before any real bleeding began. What you do find is what appears to be a small piece of clear plastic stuck in the blades. But when you fish it out, you remember that most clear plastic doesn't have little fingerprint ridges in it. Then you sit down again. And maybe not eat for the rest of the day.
Apparently I cut it twice. One was the big cut, and one was a little bit shaved off the tip, waiting for me to discover it later.
So yeah. I cut off the end of my finger.
Now, I didn't cut off a major, life-changing chunk of my finger. I'll have a flat spot, that's certain, but I can still count to ten and Schuyler can still paint all my fingernails. Still, the cut went deep into that part of the skin where the nerves live, and they do not like being exposed like that. Two weeks after the cut, it is healing up nicely (amazingly, no infection, which goes to show that God really does protect children and stupid people), but you know what?
It still hurts. A lot.
It looks sort of cool, though. I'll leave that to your imagination.
36 comments:
this last bit made me laugh so hard, and i'm pretty sure it's not just because i've been up all night.
i WAS a little disappointed not to get an actual gross photo, though.
happy healing!
I was up all night with a puking toddler. I have another person's vomit in my hair! So while I do feel bad for you about your cut finger, your account of it was AWESOME. Very, very funny. So thank you for making me laugh (again).
And I really hope that Schuyler gets to go to camp.
There is another utensil of modern convenience to avoid if one wants to keep all of ones digits in tack. . .the mandolin slicer. Or at the very least ALWAYS use the food holder provided. . . even when slicing. . .potatoes. Father's Day, 2003 I turned skillet potatoes into a protein dish.
It was a full year before I had any feeling in the deformed tip of my right pinkie, and before I could use that finger on a keyboard. Still hurts if I accidently whack the scar on something.
Does make a great story though. You'll have a permanent reminder of your almost entirely lovely trip to SF.
Ow Motherfucker Ow indeed. The backs of my knees are weak. Holy.
I got a new set of Wusthof knives for Christmas from my husband - you just pretty much detailed my worst nightmare. I slice and dice very carefully.
I forgot a pencil sharpener in a small compartment in my bag once and sliced off a hefty chunk of my middle finger. I figured out the pencil sharpener part long after the fact, so when airport personnel was going through my bag I was freaked out that the mystery sharp thing that hurt me was going to get me arrested.
Egads. You're one finger off from being the next Dave Allen!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00062/allen03_62755a.jpg
As a fellow victim of middle fingertip trauma (cut right through the top of the nail, and about 3/4 of the fingertip, with my beautiful new wedding-present Henckel's chef's knife while mincing cilantro) I feel your pain. It hurt like hell for about two or three weeks and did not respond well to pressure for a couple of months after that, but it's fine now.
A friend of mine took the tip of his middle finger off with an end mill, apparently leaving behind quite the telling crime scene (work and cutter still in the mill, small spray of blood, trail of blood leading to the restroom). He had a similar recovery story, and you can't really even see the scar.
Oh, I know about the skin in the blades bit. When I first started shaving my legs I took of a strip of skin (imagine peeling a potato) that accordioned itself between the blades. Removing it was fascinating, but totally gross. Blech.
I was kinda disappointed not to get a gross photo too. *grins*
If it makes you feel any better I did sort of the same thing, except I shaved off my fingernail. That was... unpleasant.
How funny! I once cut off the tip of one of my fingers on the top of a can of beans. The can was empty and I pushed the top, which was still partially attached, down into it, when my finger slipped in and the top came up. Instead of pushing the top back down with my other hand, I just pulled my finger out, leaving the tip of my finger behind. Man, did I feel stupid and did it hurt and bleed like a Mofo.
A few years ago I was in my old dorm's kitchen cooking dinner with my boyfriend. My apple peeler slipped in my hands and I peel off a tiinnnny strip of skin. It bled like CRAZY, it actually gushed blood. So I had to walk across campus, with my finger wrapped up in a paper towel to the Nurse's office to get it fixed. Who bandaged my whole entire finger a few inches thick.
And I love how we're all telling finger horror stories. Any other injury stories I have aren't mine. Like the girl at school who's chef knife fell (tip down) RIGHT into her thigh. And stayed there.
And I really hope she gets into camp! Surely you aren't above setting up some sort of fancy pants thing that people can contribute to for the sake of going to an awesome camp?
I cut off the tip of my finger whilst cooking last year. About as much as you describe -- rounded finger no longer round, because the top was gone. FYI, it's totally grown back and I can't really see where it happened (unlike the vertical slice into my fingertip that I made with a knife in my childhood, which still shows in my fingerprint).
Am so very sad to have missed your appearance in Corte Madera. I was really looking forward to it. Glad SF made a good impression on you.
I felt fine after reading your whole post, but now that I've read the comments I'm all woozy. I think I'll put my head between my knees for a minute and my laptop on the floor (so I can keep reading, of course).
I'm such a sicko that I actually hoped you'd have a picture of the severed finger at the end.
Feel better!
Oh! THAT'S where I left my pants.
While I faint when I actually see blood, apparently I'm fine reading about it because I skipped right to the finger part of your post and I'm still upright. I cut 3 fingers like that when I was about 11 or so. I was carving a pumpkin, with the knife blade facing "up" and my hand slipped. Ouch. I'm wondering - how do you manage to type? Doesn't that HURT?
Is it just me. . .or does anyone else, who has had a similar severing experience, have every nerve in their body shutter whenever they read or hear about other people's severing experiences??
I love you all, but you are some clumsy people.
I did the same thing in Nashville cooking in a kitchen. I still remember the pain.
Several years ago I was gesturing enthusiastically in the kitchen while having a cheerful discussion with my spouse, and discovered, much to my surprise, that I'd managed to slice through the first and second fingers on my left hand, nearly to the bone.
Apparently you're not supposed to slice the roll you're holding in your left hand with the huge bread knife in your right if you're not paying attention.
Thirteen stitches, and they're both still numb. Oy.
But your injury, now, that interests me. Does this mean you no longer have a fingerprint on that digit? Have you a future in single-digit crime, perhaps?
Dude, I hope your tetanus shot is up to date. Did I spell that right?
oh hope it heals well. Thanks for the laugh!! I really wanted to stop reading it the instant I read you were putting your toothbrush in with the razor but couldn't peel my eyes off the monitor!! And I for one am so curious to see what the finger looks like, but scared of how it will make my tummy feel afterwards!
Wow, you've inspired quiet an outpouring. I have never seen so many severed/sliced finger stories in one place.
By the way, I hope Schuyler gets to go to camp, too.
I always feel compelled to comment when anyone mentions my name. Hello! It was fun boozing with you.
Joining in the finger stories..I trimmed the tip off my index finger with a rotary cutter used for cutting fabric. It's somewhat like a pizza wheel. I thought it would be flat, but the tip re-rounded and the fingerprint looks normal again.
I also hope for the camp experience for Schuyler, it sounds cool.
You could also come up to Seattle to do a book signing...we have not just rain but snow today.
Hilarious post. Sorry about the injury--I'll need to nag my husband about being more careful when he packs--I can see a similar injury in his future.
As a holder of a PhD in music theory, I adored your nickname for the Debussy.
And, tell Julie that the picture of her is great! It's nice to see her.
Laura
I didn't cut off the tip of my own finger... but had it happen to a child in my care when I worked at a daycare! I was taking him out of the room during naptime because he was throwing chairs at sleeping children (he was a pleasant child) and as I let go of his hand to pull the door closed, he stuck his fingers into the hinge side. The door was almost closed before he started wailing.
I am good in a crisis, really. But when the paramedics got there, they unwrapped his finger out of our line of sight, nodded at each other, and looked at me. "Partial amputation," the one said. I nearly dropped the kid.
He came back all stitched up with two inches of gauze wrapped around his hand a few days later... and proceeded to smack the crap out of the other kids with said mummy hand.
Maybe it makes me a terrible person, but yes, I totally believe in karma. Which leads to the question - who did you wrong before your trip?
I loved reading about your time in San Francisco. My daughter Julia and I are heading to the Bay Area this weekend to attend the open Lab at the Bridge School. I am even more excited to go after reading about your experience there. I also would love to send my daughter (6) to the camp, but hear ya on the price. It is very expensive, but I think it would be a terrific life experience for the children who use Big Box of Words or as we call it "Talkers".
Oooh. Sliced the side of my left index finger with an X-acto knife in college, which was bad enough...and then, a few years afterwards, encountered a guest artist who sliced off the tip of his thumb with a table saw many years before, showed us slides of the thing posed next to artwork he'd made, then pulled the tip itself out in a small vial of formaldehyde for good measure.
I think the pictures of how tres kewl it looks can wait.
;-)
My husband cut off the tip of his middle finger in a heavy door when he was a small child. He is 41 now and it is still slightly deformed and extremely sensitive to pressure, but he can type with no problems. I hope yours heals up nicely, and just think you are so lucky it didn't get infected!
Rob,
Sorry to hear about your finger.
My husband got 2 fingers cut off (on his left hand; the bird and the one next to his pinky) down to the highest knuckle in the 2nd grade. It was an old steel gate.
When our daughter Abigail sees it she says "Uh oh"......
Carey now has a web design company named Stubby Studios. (It's in the making)
-Shannon
-Shannon
Just want to say, I too have cut the tip of my finger, and I too had work to be done, not the travel kind but the starting a new job kind, unfortunately they were ill-informed of my coming to work, and I called frantically saying I just cut my finger off and wasn't doing my shift. I must tell you the hospital called it an "evalsion" or something to that extent and finally after more then 5 years...the skin has for the most part grew back. I also must say its those flat plain graters A-LA-Ron Popeel (aka Ronco...you'll only be shedding tears of joy) that have EXTREMELY sharp blades...I was just a dumbass...
You know, this reminded me of an incident from my childhood. My dog once had a similar injury - she cut her paw jumping through a window to get to the chickens taunting her from (they thought) the safety of their coop - and it to bled like a mofo. It bled all night, right through many, many layers of bandages. And when we went to the vet in the morning? One of the pads on her paws turned out to be attached by only a thread of skin.
At least you weren't chasing chickens.
Did that once about twenty years ago. Hurt like a mother for about a week. At the time, I hyperventilated and went into shock for about 5 minutes. I remember holding my finger, blacking out and then coming to with my roommate staring at me with a very concerned look on his face.
Omg the finger cut story was really funny, and horrible, too. I totally did that once with my thumb and a pair of scissors, rushing to make crafts for a class I was about to teach. It took six weeks of band-aid wearing for that to heal completely! Hope your finger feels better soon!
Well, I was always morbidly fascinated by the fact that my grandfather had the tip of his finger cut off in a railcar door when he worked on the railroad, and that he just taped it back on.. So I quite enjoyed that last bit. :P He never had feeling in the end of that finger again. On that note, I wonder how yours will ultimately heal up.
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