Don't try this at home

With all my personal angst on Friday and planting veggies on Saturday, I completely forgot to tell you all about a minor medical emergency that we had last week!

As some of you know if you follow this blog, hubby is the only cook in our family, so whenever he says he wants some cooking tool, I rush right out and get it for him. Got to keep the cook happy, right?! Got to keep those good meals coming! Well, he saw this peeler gadget on TV, and thought it looked cool. So I ordered it on line and it finally arrived Wednesday. With an enclosed attachment, it also works as a tiny mandoline, so he used it to slice some vegetables for our salad on Thursday night. He was so impressed that he called me into the kitchen so he could demonstrate to me how well it worked.

He was enthusiastically slicing away on a carrot when I'm sure you can guess what happened. Yes, he sliced his finger. Now, he’s had many a kitchen accident in all his years of cooking, so he’s not a baby about it. He said “Ooops,” and went off to the bathroom. I tagged along a few minutes later in case he needed help putting on a bandaid.

OMG! When I innocently walked into the bathroom…I have never seen so much blood. It was spurting out of the end of his finger. Turned out he had actually sliced the tip of his finger OFF! He was wrapping it with gauze but the gauze was getting soaked as fast as he wrapped it. He did all the things you are supposed to do (direct pressure, holding it above his heart, etc). But no matter what he did it continued to soak through.

Now, there is a reason I’m not a firefighter anymore and instead I pursued fire prevention as a career...I AM NOT GOOD WITH BLOOD! When I was training to become an Emergency Medical Technician many years ago (it was a job requirement to be a firefighter), I had to do a short stint in the local hospital emergency room. I’m fine with broken bones…But the minute you show me blood, I get woozy. Whenever I would be assisting the doctor with cleaning out wounds or putting in stitches, I would have to excuse myself from the treatment room, and go out to the lobby to put my head between my knees so I wouldn’t faint. I made a fine EMT…as long as the patient didn’t bleed. lol

So, I’m trying to help hubby cover his finger with the gauze, but there is all this blood in the sink and on the bathroom counter and even some on the floor. I told him maybe we should go to the emergency room, but he’s a man, so of course he refused. But I was getting a bit lightheaded at the sight of all the blood, and I had to excuse myself or fall in a dead faint and probably hit my head...then I would have ended up in the emergency room with a concussion.

After about two hours, the bleeding slowed down just a bit, and he was able to control it with continuing direct pressure and ice. But the next morning, when he tried to change the bandage, it started bleeding profusely again. Thank heavens I was at work, and he had someone from his office help him.

FINALLY Saturday, it stopped bleeding enough so that he could change the bandage without making a big mess.

So, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. If you are thinking about buying this seemingly harmless gadget, be aware that you could cut off your finger tip.

And if you do, don’t come crying to ME for help!