The table saw and the damage done.
The morning started out bad as I was not feeling well, my head felt like a balloon filled with porridge and gravel.
Rather than a bug I think it is just an unhealthy life style catching up with me what with being a career smoker and eating like a teenager.
Yeah the pretty much nightly ritual of gettin a glow on has to be mentioned.
Add to this a stressful job environment, not because of the work but because of management style and the fact that I have a mind that sometimes wanders.
There are other factors that contributed to this nasty injury and I will leave them out as I personally dislike re-visiting the moment in time where it all came to a point of
CHAOS!
It truly amazes a person when you look back at a catastrophic event and it plays in slow motion.
That is but a memory of what happened, don't look confused just yet I'm sure this thread will become more tangled as I write.
I have been in several car accidents where for reasons left unclear I have gone out of control. What has amazed me beside the fact that I survived them all is the suppression of time that seems to occur.
I think that some of us have this ability and some have not. The ones that are able to have real time slow down have a much higher chance of surviving the chaos.
This recent accident was no different except the chaos is localized and the very fast actions after the chaos sometimes played in slow motion.
Right after the cut I had to maneuver myself through a very cluttered storage area and find help to get to the hospital at the same time I am taking off my jean jacket pulling the sleeve off over my wounded hand while taking the rest of the jacket and wrapping it around the forearm to apply pressure to stem blood flow yell at my manager "Hospital NOW!" and going through the foyer to my managers car I hear the saw still going and run over to turn it off then jump in the car and off we go for the 3 minute trip to the hospital.
The whole sequence up to that point took about 6 minutes.
It is at this point where I will take the time to thank God that I was at the apartment building where our office is located.
I also thank God that Miss Mandy Woodford was there and without hesitation responded, I simply can't give enough thanks for that.
We were brought to the head of the line at emergency and now 10 to 15 minutes after chaos a few things occur.
My thoughts go to the injury and what damage was being hidden under my blue jean bandage.
I replayed the event and knew I hadn't severed the thumb completely but knew by the amount of blood already coming through several layers of my storm rider that there was MAJOR damage.
The loss of fluid of course made me dehydrated that along with the sickening images of a shredded appendage running through my mind were making me light headed.
At this time our friend ADRENALIN started to pack up and his nemesis PAIN moved right in.
I was walked over to a room laid down and I asked for water which of course they couldn't give me I suppose in case I had to go into surgery.
"Fuckin great!" I thought, I have a thumb that feels a dozen times too big it's starting to hurt and if I don't get fluid soon I am going to start retching.
The throbbing was getting worse causing me to moan between words,
"Nurse could you get mmmmmmmeeee a wet cloth for mmmmmmmmeey face?"
She, bless her heart, was quick and placed a nice cool slightly wet towel on my fore head, she went out of the room and the towel was in my mouth being sucked on, HA! those days as a parent paid off.
Now pain was an issue but really there was more discomfort than sharp pain, a burning sensation with the occasional misfiring of nerves that had been ripped out and tendons that had come to the same fate ached but the real pain was the pain in my thoughts.
I was moaning quietly at first more from wallowing in self pity rather than reacting to unmanageable physical pain.
Wow good old times eh.
The bump right below my thumbnail in the photo is a tendon, in case you were wondering.
Finally a doc comes in and says something about a pain blocker and told me to "Stop moaning for heaven sakes, I want to get the needle in the right place now don't move...and there we go"
I could not believe the way this drug worked, the speed of this stuff is close to light. No sooner had I felt the prick of the needle my thumb was the last thing on my mind.
I was off to xray...happily I might add, not in a narcotic haze (been there) but I simply felt nothing. Well until the radiologist asked me to contort my hand to get a proper angle.
I waited back in my room pacing around thinking that at least in agony I had a reason to be here and now it seemed as though I was out of place like a 40 year old on a pro basket ball team. So I decided to pop out a bit into the heart of the ER.
A nurse scolded me for looking at some other patients info on a computer screen just outside my room. Really it was a ruse to check out the hot nurses cruising around the ER, I doubted it would have made any difference to this rather stern looking woman.
I sheepishly crossed back over the threshold and laid back down this of course being a proper time to go over the accident again setting off a case of the nervous sweats
The nurse came in and informed me that the doctor would look at the xray to determine if I needed reconstructive surgery.
It didn't take him long..."You really have a messed up thumb and even so I would just sew it back together but it looks as though you fractured the bone at the tip and you might have damage to the lower bone. The surgeon will look at the x-ray in a few minutes."
Continued in Pt2
Rather than a bug I think it is just an unhealthy life style catching up with me what with being a career smoker and eating like a teenager.
Yeah the pretty much nightly ritual of gettin a glow on has to be mentioned.
Add to this a stressful job environment, not because of the work but because of management style and the fact that I have a mind that sometimes wanders.
There are other factors that contributed to this nasty injury and I will leave them out as I personally dislike re-visiting the moment in time where it all came to a point of
CHAOS!
 |
| unwrapped to take out the sutures |
That is but a memory of what happened, don't look confused just yet I'm sure this thread will become more tangled as I write.
I have been in several car accidents where for reasons left unclear I have gone out of control. What has amazed me beside the fact that I survived them all is the suppression of time that seems to occur.
I think that some of us have this ability and some have not. The ones that are able to have real time slow down have a much higher chance of surviving the chaos.
This recent accident was no different except the chaos is localized and the very fast actions after the chaos sometimes played in slow motion.
Right after the cut I had to maneuver myself through a very cluttered storage area and find help to get to the hospital at the same time I am taking off my jean jacket pulling the sleeve off over my wounded hand while taking the rest of the jacket and wrapping it around the forearm to apply pressure to stem blood flow yell at my manager "Hospital NOW!" and going through the foyer to my managers car I hear the saw still going and run over to turn it off then jump in the car and off we go for the 3 minute trip to the hospital.
 |
| doesn't look so bad right? |
It is at this point where I will take the time to thank God that I was at the apartment building where our office is located.
I also thank God that Miss Mandy Woodford was there and without hesitation responded, I simply can't give enough thanks for that.
We were brought to the head of the line at emergency and now 10 to 15 minutes after chaos a few things occur.
My thoughts go to the injury and what damage was being hidden under my blue jean bandage.
I replayed the event and knew I hadn't severed the thumb completely but knew by the amount of blood already coming through several layers of my storm rider that there was MAJOR damage.
The loss of fluid of course made me dehydrated that along with the sickening images of a shredded appendage running through my mind were making me light headed.
At this time our friend ADRENALIN started to pack up and his nemesis PAIN moved right in.
I was walked over to a room laid down and I asked for water which of course they couldn't give me I suppose in case I had to go into surgery.
"Fuckin great!" I thought, I have a thumb that feels a dozen times too big it's starting to hurt and if I don't get fluid soon I am going to start retching.
The throbbing was getting worse causing me to moan between words,
"Nurse could you get mmmmmmmeeee a wet cloth for mmmmmmmmeey face?"
She, bless her heart, was quick and placed a nice cool slightly wet towel on my fore head, she went out of the room and the towel was in my mouth being sucked on, HA! those days as a parent paid off.
Now pain was an issue but really there was more discomfort than sharp pain, a burning sensation with the occasional misfiring of nerves that had been ripped out and tendons that had come to the same fate ached but the real pain was the pain in my thoughts.
I was moaning quietly at first more from wallowing in self pity rather than reacting to unmanageable physical pain.
 |
| looks pretty straight too! |
Wow good old times eh.
The bump right below my thumbnail in the photo is a tendon, in case you were wondering.
Finally a doc comes in and says something about a pain blocker and told me to "Stop moaning for heaven sakes, I want to get the needle in the right place now don't move...and there we go"
I could not believe the way this drug worked, the speed of this stuff is close to light. No sooner had I felt the prick of the needle my thumb was the last thing on my mind.
I was off to xray...happily I might add, not in a narcotic haze (been there) but I simply felt nothing. Well until the radiologist asked me to contort my hand to get a proper angle.
I waited back in my room pacing around thinking that at least in agony I had a reason to be here and now it seemed as though I was out of place like a 40 year old on a pro basket ball team. So I decided to pop out a bit into the heart of the ER.
A nurse scolded me for looking at some other patients info on a computer screen just outside my room. Really it was a ruse to check out the hot nurses cruising around the ER, I doubted it would have made any difference to this rather stern looking woman.
I sheepishly crossed back over the threshold and laid back down this of course being a proper time to go over the accident again setting off a case of the nervous sweats
The nurse came in and informed me that the doctor would look at the xray to determine if I needed reconstructive surgery.
It didn't take him long..."You really have a messed up thumb and even so I would just sew it back together but it looks as though you fractured the bone at the tip and you might have damage to the lower bone. The surgeon will look at the x-ray in a few minutes."
Continued in Pt2
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