(Warning: graphic pictures below.)
I kind of had a bad reaction to headache pills yesterday and got into an extremely intoxicated state where my mind worked fine but my body didn’t. I couldn’t walk four feet without falling. I probably should have sought medical attention right then and there, but I was alone and in no fit state to drive, and it didn’t occur to me that it might be a “911” type situation. (It was.) By means of clinging to the rail and sliding down the steps on my butt, I managed to get downstairs without killing myself and then tried to get a glass of orange juice, but broke the glass and cut myself on the hand in the worst possible place: on the webbing, between the thumb and forefinger. This was the result:
While still lacking any coordination at all, I tried to clean things up. I couldn’t find any paper towels (thanks Mom, for going away on vacation for ten days and not telling your house-sitter where the paper towels were) and tried to use toilet paper, without much success. The result being that I bled all over the kitchen and all over myself. These, for example, are my pajama pants:
I finally gave up and went back to bed. Later, the guy doing remodeling on Mom’s house came over, and woke me to ask why the kitchen looked like a crime scene. I told him and he bound up my hand with gauze and tape from his first-aid kit, doing a fine job. I went back to bed again and slept for a day or more.
I woke up in the afternoon the next day (today), feeling rather better, and decided to take a shower, which meant unwrapping the bandage. That’s when I realized just how bad the cut was. I drove to the urgent care clinic but they refused to assist me. They got the idea that I had tried to commit suicide and forced me to go to the hospital emergency room, where I went through loads of unnecessary medical procedures and also a suicide assessment because they too wouldn’t believe this had all been an accident or series of accidents.
Four hours after I arrived in ER, someone finally cleaned and sutured my hand, but because of where the cut is they couldn’t do much for it. This is the result:
Not a great improvement, as you can see. It hurts like a bee-yotch. Thank goodness it was my left hand, not my right one, and they did prescribe antibiotics, but I wonder if my hand will ever be the same again. I can’t even hold my stupid purse with that hand now.
And I still have to clean up the kitchen.
The Charley Project Blog 
OMG how horrible! it looks like something from OJ!
OMG, Meaghan! Thank goodness you didn’t bleed to death! Get better!!
I’ll survive. I cleaned the kitchen, mopped the floor. There was blood on the stove, the wall, the light switches, the fridge door, the kitchen sink, the kitchen counter, the toilet… Ironically if I hadn’t tried to clean up the mess right then, I wouldn’t have left bloodstains all over the place. It looked like a squirrel had been slaughtered in there.
Why does this always happen to me?
Your description of the kitchen reminded me of the Joan Risch crime scene!
I hope it heals quickly, it looks awful.
Can I just interject here how hard that type of laceration is to sew up? I’m glad you didn’t hit any tendons and such – hand injuries can really get complicated in a hurry. Hope you’re on the mend soon.
I have done exactly the same in the same place and on the left hand. Two hours in a and e which isn’t too bad. Just realised this was last year. Did yours scar? 🙂
Not too much. A V-shaped notch. You can’t really see it unless you know it’s there.