Sticking out like a sore thumb. Gross.

I had an unfortunate encounter with the cheese slicer on Saturday. I'm an idiot. I remember cutting the top slice of cheddar a little bit too thin so I changed the angle of the slicer, and the next thing I knew I had taken a chunk out of my thumb. I'm not a big cusser, but that made me utter an expletive or two. Angela took one look at my mamed thumb and started squirming, but she still managed to help me find the chunk of missing skin on the counter. It was next to some onions I had been cutting earlier. It stood out because it was pink instead of white. (I told you it was gross.) Then Angela went upstairs to get her mom, who was staying with us for the weekend. Her mom came downstairs and stuck my hand under the kitchen faucet because washing the blood away was the only way to get a good view of the wound, and then she packed a ziploc bag full of ice and told me to stick my hand in it during the ride to the urgent care center. I started getting light-headed, and I was dripping with sweat and about to throw up by the time I got to the garage. I felt like a total wimp, but the nurses told me later that hand injuries usually make people the most light-headed, so then I didn't feel so bad. By the time Angela and I got to PrimaCare, the ziploc bag was half full of melted ice and blood. It was disgusting and embarassing carrying that mess into the waiting room, but when the receptionist saw the bloody bag she called a nurse and had Angela and me and my bloody bag escorted to the back right away. Yay! Since we didn't have to wait it was all worth it. I'm glad I didn't slice it just a little bit, cuz then we would have had to sit there and twiddle our thumbs (or thumb) for two hours.

I couldn't get stitches because there was no skin to close. There was just a chunk of skin gone, so the doctor had to cauterized it to stop the bleeding. He had no use for the chunk of skin that we had rescued from the onion pile on the counter. In order to cauterize my thumb (or give it a chemical burn and change the wound from a cut to a burn...ew) he had to give my thumb a shot to numb it. Dang that hurt! But I refrained from using expletives. The doctor made a comment about not liking my Texas Longhorns t-shirt a few minutes before that and he mentioned that he was an Aggie, so right after he had caused me all that extra pain with the shot I said, "The Aggies are getting killed by Oklahoma right now so take that." Ha! We were even. So he cauterized the wound, had me lay there for thirty minutes or so to make sure it wouldn't start gushing again, and sent us on our way.

The wound will heal, but I think I'm going to have a dent in my thumb for the rest of my life. It's a good thing I don't have aspirations of becoming a hand model. The Colts won and they're 9-0, so it was still a good weekend.