Even though I am one of the klutziest people I know, I am pretty lucky with what happens in my klutzy moments. I always seem to have new bruises popping up that I have no clue how they happened. I’ve broken my toes more times than I can count and have gotten really good at buddy taping my toes together. And more often than not, my klutzy moments only result in hurting my ego a bit.
But this past Sunday, my klutziness caused something that really made me have a moment of panic. I was preparing ingredients for my dinner (yup, cooking from scratch again). It’s something I’ve made before and I was happy that it was going to be easy to put together. I have a decent knife set, but I usually don’t use the bigger knives because the small ones work. But I was trying to cut a big onion and the small knife wasn’t doing the job. So I took one of the bigger ones out (I think I’ve used it once or twice before) and got to cutting my onion.
I don’t actually remember how it happened, but the knife slipped and went through the top of my finger. It basically sliced the top knuckle area on my middle finger. But on the top of it where it’s just skin and bone, not the bottom by the finger pad where there is more to it. And as soon as it happened, I was in a lot of pain. I quickly grabbed some paper towels and put pressure on it because it was bleeding quite a bit (although I managed to not get any blood on my ingredients). I didn’t look at the injury too much since I immediately put the paper towel on it, but I knew it wasn’t good.
After a few minutes, I realized that this cut may be worse than I thought and I was terrified that I’d need stitches. Needing stitches is never good, but now it’s especially scary since I do not want to have to go to the hospital if I can avoid it. It was bad enough to have to go to the pharmacy to get my prescriptions. I do not want to have to step foot into an ER where I know there may be patients with coronavirus or other contagious things. So I called my parents.
I’m lucky with my parents and brother all being in medicine. Even though my parents are both retired, they still are great at giving medical advice and letting me know when I need more serious medical help. So when I called my mom I was trying to explain the best I could about what happened and how much my finger was bleeding. She gave me some advice about when I should worry and how long it might take for the bleeding to slow down or stop. And then we got on FaceTime so she could see the wound after I took the paper towels off. By the time I was on the phone, the bleeding was not as bad as it had been when it happened. So that’s a good sign. My mom told me to keep putting pressure on it and to check in with them in an hour or two.
I put a clean paper towel on my finger and wrapped it with some medical tape to keep a bit of pressure on it. I also needed to finish preparing dinner because I didn’t want my ingredients to go to waste. Cooking with only 1 good hand isn’t easy, but it can be done.
By the time my food was done in the oven, the bleeding had stopped. So I put a regular bandage on it and called my mom to update her. I’m sure she knew I would be fine, but it was still good for me to check in with her.
I had to figure out some creative solutions for things that evening because I wanted to protect my finger. I used gloves for a lot of things so my bandage wouldn’t get wet. And it seemed to be doing ok when I went to bed. My finger was really sore (and I could tell it would be hurting a lot for the rest of this week), but the bandage was staying on and it didn’t seem like it was bleeding anymore.
Yesterday, I had my workout and that was another challenge. Anything that required me to support myself on my hands or lift weight wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t realize that I wouldn’t have the ability to grip with the cut where it was. When I started my workout, I just had the bandage on there. But I realized I needed a bit more protection so I wrapped the bandage in medical tape to keep it secure. It limited my movement in my finger even more, but it helped with a lot of the pain. It also made it look like I was giving the finger no matter what.
Showering was another interesting challenge. I ended up cutting a finger off of a rubber glove and then putting medical tape around it to try to secure it. Water still got in there and I needed to change the bandage again, but it was better than if I hadn’t done anything. Because of where the cut it, the waterproof bandages don’t really stick to it. I did order some knuckle bandages that should be arriving this week, so hopefully those will help.
I’m sure this sounds silly and that I shouldn’t have needed to call my parents just because I cut myself. But it’s scary when something like that happens and you are all alone. And I really didn’t know if I needed to go to the hospital for this. If I couldn’t reach my parents, I probably would have gone because I would rather be safe than sorry. But right now, the hospital isn’t always the safest choice. I’m grateful that my mom was able to calm me down when I was scared and could help me try to fix this the best she could. I probably have a few weeks of healing ahead of me before my finger seems normal again, but at least I’m taking care of it and I know I’ll be ok.
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