Gimpy

If you look closely, you can see the fibrous tissue under the skin...

Well, I got my first stitches yesterday. It is ironic that i've been fairly resilient up until now, but perhaps it is my old age that has done me in. I'm not as strong as I used to be I have found out.

I decided to help a fellow coworker who was having a problem and I ended up catching the back of my hand on a rusty nail on the bottom of a pallet. I guess the adage "No good deed goes unpunished" is still thriving.

The biggest issue is, I was terribly busy at work and really didn't have time to deal with it. After several urging from fellow coworkers I went to the clinic at 3:00 to see if i needed stitches. The funny thing is, not too long ago a buddy and I were rafting and had a little accident. He needed several stitches and I was there watching.

To me, all the scrubbing and the needles being stuck into the gaping wound looked much more painful than just letting his leg heal itself. I was over there thinking "look, he's hurt enough, do you REALLY need to be doing all of that? I think he learned his lesson". Yes, to me it looked like the nurse was trying to pound home the idea that what he had just done deserved some severe form of punishment that she was more than willing to meter out.

I knew this was all coming to a hand near me. It's not that i'm a wimp or anything, far from it. I was quite busy and wanted to finish out my day. But yes, I also didn't want the needles jammed into my already painful hand. My thoughts are "You're already going to be puncturing the skin with the stitches, why make more punctures with needles?"

After all was said and done, I walked out of there with 7 stitches and enough gauze and blue bandage to cover not just my hand, but probably my right thigh as well. I got back to work at 4:15, and ended up staying until 5:30. It was a bad time for me to have to leave work, but I think the initial crisis was averted.

PS I just received a couple of questions "Did the shots and the stitches hurt?". Yes. To numb you up, they take a needle and jam it into your wound. Since your wound is already excruciatingly painful, this does not add to the comfort level. It feels very much like you are split open, and someone is stabbing you inside the fissure in your skin (which ironically is happening).

So they stabbed me with the needle (numbing agent) about 12 times in this gaping hole, and then a couple times around the wound into the skin that had thus far escaped injury-which feels very much like you are being stabbed in the top of your hand with a needle. Then comes the stinging sensation, then the burning, and then the pain stops being quite so sharp as they finish their manial poking.

The stitches themselves, interestingly enough, didn't hurt at all. As a matter of fact, I couldn't even feel them...at all. I didn't feel the needle, I didn't feel her threading it through my skin. Absolutely nothing, which is ironic because the dentist's concoction of numbing agents doesn't work nearly so well, or at all as a matter of fact.

I secretly think, however, that the nurse didn't put a numbing agent in my hand, but instead stabbed it until shock set in and my hand refused to feel any more pain. It shut itself down and then she was free to stab some more.

I also got a tetanus shot, which currently feels like a jerk punched me in the shoulder with brass knuckles. I think it hurts more right now more than my hand does!