The Finger
Or How I Won the Stupid Award

Tues, 4 Oct, 2005
Lee Thompson-Herbert

I sewed through my left index finger with the sewing machine on Monday night. Did I mention that my machine is one of the near-indestructable ones that sews through 5-6 layers of heavy fabric? Anyway, I was "lucky" in that I was working with a microtex needle, which is fine and sharp instead of say, a leather needle, which would have ripped my hand apart. But because it was a fine needle, it shattered in my hand.

So, trip to the ER at 2am. Xray showed two tiny fragments still in my finger. And my records showed that my last tetanus shot was 11 years ago. So the ER doc shoots The Finger full of xylocaine and tries to remove the fragments, but can't get them. She says I'll have to come back and have the hand surgeon do it under the fluoroscope. Tally so far: one really fucked up hand, one tetanus shot, one prescription for antibiotics, and some really groovy painkillers. Go through the all-night drive through to get "breakfast" and get home about 6am.

Hand surgeon calls at 8:30am when he goes on-shift. No one told him we were at the hospital all night. So after establishing that I needed a few hours of sleep, we set up surgery for that afternoon. I go back to bed and attempt to sleep with my hand propped up.

Get to the hospital that afternoon and meet the surgeon. He wheels in his spiffy portable xray machine and takes a look. There's only one fragment now, so the ER doc must've gotten one last night. They start prepping my hand when the surgeon is paged from the OR. A kid with a bone sticking out of his arm (compound fracture) has just been brought in. Since we were still waiting for the injected anesthetic in my hand to really kick in, the surgeon excuses himself and says he'll be back in 15-20 minutes. And assures me that the stuff he injected into my hand will last many hours...maybe until the next day (it's 8:20 the next morning and The Finger is still partially numb).

I doze off on the gurney while waiting. Surgeon returns. He scrubs my hand down with Betadine again, because I've let it touch the table (must be numb, couldn't feel I was touching anything). Off we go. Surgeon tells my husband as he makes his first cut that if he's going to faint, he should go sit down right now. George, having been a first responder, is pretty hardcore and didn't faint or get squeamish. I couldn't watch because I was (probably intentionally) at a bad angle to see anything.

Surgeon gets the fragment in less than a minute. Turns out it was the very tip of the needle, which broke off at entry. They patch me up and we can finally go home and get some sleep. Get home about 5:30pm. About 7:30pm, decide we have to eat dinner but we're too wrecked to cook so we order from the (excellent) chinese place down the road. Eat dinner, clean up the debris, fall into bed.

I now have a nine-finger typing method until the incision heals and I obviously won't be playing flute this week. Sent out email saying I'd won the Stupid Award and wouldn't be at rehearsals.

The anesthetic has almost worn off and The Finger has started to throb. Time to get out those groovy painkillers...
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