Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Cut

photo by Esther17 on flickr under a Creative Commons license




What a thrill ----

My thumb instead of an onion.

The top quite gone

Except for a sort of hinge


Of skin,

A flap like a hat,

Dead white.

Then that red plush.

Sylvia Plath


Well, it wasn't quite that bad; in fact, it was a coin toss whether to go to the doctor or nail it down myself with band-aids. When it kept bleeding after several hours, the doctor came up heads.


A vial of Special Glue Intended Only For Skin was applied*, a band-aid duly wrapped around it, and I was on my way. Well, after having a completely embarrassing adrenalin rush ("I feel faint") in which I was instructed to lie on the floor.


Y'know, I always thought that people who got faint at the sight of blood were just chickens. That the reaction was completely under their control. Well, it isn't.


Which isn't to say I'm not a chicken. But it most definitely was not under my control.


What I did have under my control was the decision to open a stubborn bit of plastic packaging with a dull pair of scissors held like a knife, blade-side up, my hand pressing the plastic bit down onto it. If I had seen one of my kids doing this, I would have screeched at them not to be so stupid, you're going to cut yourself like that.


Well, it was (stupid) and I did (cut myself like that). D'oh!



* Isn't it ironic that the doctor's Special Glue is, in fact, superglue? It really is great at sticking to skin, as anyone who has worked with it knows (sometimes painfully so).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

And I can't say a thing about being careful! I have a flap of skin on the tip of my index finger which needs a band aid everyday so I can use the keyboard. And how did I do it? Carelessness using scissors to cut tough plastic. Just a teeny bit away from taking off the top and it hurt like crazy as all those little nerve endings are right there! Does this run in the family?