Weigh-In 2/3/09 & “Stitches” Story

Thank you all for the well wishes and the interest in my story!  Sorry it took me so long to let you know what happened, but things actually got a bit more interesting after I posted that picture.

First, my weekend was fairly great.  I went hiking twice with my mom and we had fun.  Got a lot of my errands done, got flirted with by the creepy Wal-Mart checkout guy, made my soynuts.  The soynuts turned out great, but I need to cook them a bit longer on the next batch.  I was afraid of burning them, so they’re still a bit chewy. 

About the hiking, I’m so proud of my mom!  She has diabetes and arthritis and had breast cancer, but she’s been going walking with me each weekend and on this past Sunday, she decided to try the intermediate hiking trail with me.  We stopped a couple of times, but I was just so proud of her!  She made it the entire mile and a half.  She also had her quarterly bloodwork done this past week and everything was excellent!  Her doctor’s response was ”what have you been doing differently?!  Whatever it is, keep it up!”

Unfortunately, I didn’t get all of my goals accomplished for the weekend.  No packages were mailed, car wasn’t washed (although I did help my mom wash her car by hand), taxes are done but not in final form and not mailed, etc.  I started to make my homemade baked potato chips and that is where my “Stitches” story comes in to play.

MaggieApril wins the prize (if there was a prize).  This is indeed why I try to avoid cooking.  Although I’ll admit this is actually my first serious kitchen disaster.  I was almost done cooking some extra lean ground turkey and seasoned tomatoes, so I had pre-heated the oven and washed my potatoes.  I was going to try both an Idaho potato and a sweet potato, so had both of them washed and ready to go.  I started on the Idaho potato, and because it was so large, it would have been really hard to use the hand guard – I should have tried it anyway.  The first few slices went perfectly.  I checked the thickness of the slices and it was exactly as I wanted it.  Slice, slice.  “AHHHHHH”  You guessed it.  My finger slipped off of the potato and right through the blade.  I was using my mom’s mandolin which looks very similar to this, except that she’s had it since the ’70s so it is a bright, bright orange color.

And this is the result (click thumbnail for larger image).:

I sliced a huge chunk off of the pad of my finger which, of course, just gushed blood.  To make matters more interesting, I was in my pajamas with all of the clothes I usually wear in the washing machine or dryer.  Somehow I got my PJ’s off, some old pants and an old zip-up jacket on over a tank.  All while holding my finger up and covered with a stack of paper towels.  I tried taking the paper towels off to see if it had stopped bleeding or to see how bad it was, but every time I removed the pressure, it just started gushing again.  When we got to the hospital, we went directly to the emergency entrance…or what used to be the emergency entrance.  Apparently the new emergency entrance opened up four days prior to my incident.  Did I mention that the new emergency room was on the other side of the hospital?  A security guard escorted us over there,  but I turned down a wheelchair ride.  NSV? 

Did I mention that it hurt like freaking hell??  Luckily, shortly after I got there, the doctor gave me two shots of novocaine to deaden the finger.  THANK GOD.  The shots themselves hurt like hell, though.  It felt like he was sticking the needle all the way through my finger.  But they kicked in pretty fast so it was entirely worth it.  Oh, and I had to get a lovely tetanus shot, too.  So not only is my finger sore, but my shoulder is as well.  I do feel sorry for the kid in the room next to me, though.  He got his novocaine shot and apparently started yelling at the pain (according to the doc), but they kept the novocaine shot stuff in the room that the kid was in.  When the doctor when in to get my shot prepared, the kid started crying because he thought the shot was for him.  The doctor had to explain that he was making it for someone else.  Poor kid!

But then things get interesting when you’re visiting an ER in its first week of operation.  Doctors walk off with patient charts in their pockets (as mine did) and the nurses scramble to try and find them, supplies are locked up and they have to hunt down people who know the codes, there are new supplies that the nurses have to get used to, etc.  By this time, I was numb and just had to laugh.  On the plus side, I liked this doctor better than any of the doctors I’ve seen in the past year.

As you can see from the picture, he gave me two stitches, mostly to try and stop the bleeding.  Unfortunately, it’s still bleeding a bit even today.  Of course, it would probably help if I would stop bumping it into things.  The people around me have probably never heard me cussing such a blue-streak.  When the painkillers wear off, it feels like someone is stabbing my finger with an ice pick.

Speaking of painkillers, this is where my story gets more interesting.  At around 2am on Monday morning, I took my antibiotic and pain pill (hydrocodone) after eating my dinner (you know I have an odd schedule).  The hydrocodone seemed to help the night before and probably would have helped that morning, too, but my bandage accidentally came off and it hurt like hell getting it back on.  So I think that negated the pill’s effect.  I tossed and turned and tossed and turned and couldn’t get to sleep.  I’m always freezing in my house, but I was burning up and was extremely thirsty.  We’re talking crazy thirsty.  I got out of bed and went to check the thermostat, sure that someone had turned it up way high.  It was normal, but I noticed that my mom was out of the shower.  This was about 4:30 in the morning.  I knocked on her door to tell her about the bandage and how much pain I was in when I suddenly got extremely lightheaded.  I’ve had problems before with getting really lightheaded if I stand up too fast, so I just assumed that this was kind of the same thing and that it would pass.  Uh, no.  I remember saying “I just got really lightheaded,” and reaching out for the door frame.  Everything got really quiet.  I remember noticing that I couldn;t hear the fan that was going in my room anymore.  The next thing I knew, I was waking up on our hallway floor to hear my mom yelling for my dad, “JT, Pam just passed out!”  For a second I was really confused and felt like I was waking up from sleep.  I thought at first that I was in my bed and that my mom was coming in to wake me up because something was wrong.  Then I realized that my nice soft comfortable bed was actually our not-so-soft carpet.  Luckily, I wasn’t out for too long, but it was the weirdest experience of my life.  I’ve never fainted before.

Apparently my mom was only half dressed (she was peeking around her door to talk to me), so when she saw my eyes close and me start to take a step back and fall, she swung out really fast to try and catch me, but ended up knocking her wrist into something (the doorknob or frame or something).  So now her wrist is all black and blue and painful.  Also unfortunately, she missed me and she said I slid down the wall (bumping the back of my head in the process).  Did I mention that when I woke up, my head was about a foot from the top of our stairs?

So this was the second moment in two days when I was overwhelmingly grateful to have two such wonderful parents and was grateful that I am living with them.  My dad immediately wet a washcloth to place on my forehead, got me a pillow, and covered me in a blanket.  My mom called Ask-A-Nurse to see if I should go back to the hospital and she said that with the pain medication, the loss of blood, the pain, and all of the stress of the night before, it wasn’t too surprising that that happened.  She told me to stay in bed with my feet propped higher than my heart and drink lots of fluids.  So that’s what I did all day.  My mom had a doctor’s appointment that morning and asked him about it and he just said to stop the hydrocodone.  I’ve been pretty wobbly for the past day, but no more fainting spells.  My mom even worked from home to keep an eye on me and walked me to and from the bathroom to make sure I didn’t faint again.  And my dad was there all day to see if I needed anything.  I am one truly lucky woman to have two such wonderful parents.

So now I’m just finishing up my first day back at work and am doing my darnedest to try to remember not to use my pinky finger when I type.  After 20+ years of habit, it’s been hard to remember.  I forgot once a few minutes ago and oh holy hell did it hurt.

But when you think about it…I really am lucky.  It could have been much, much worse.

Since I was cooking my dinner when my accident happened, we ended up hitting McDonald’s on our way home from the hospital.  I just couldn’t handle having to fix something after that.  Then last night, we got pizza.  Yum.  But those two splurges put me up 1.2 pounds this week.  Oh well.  I know it’ll come off and I had other, more important, things to worry about!

Anyway, thanks again for your concern!!  I am now on my way home and will probably go right to bed!  I hope your week is getting off to a better start!