Recently really mashed up my finger but good. Blood, terror, the whole deal. Maybe I’ll post some pictures down at the bottom for lookie-loos. Typing is difficult. Writing and holding cutlery are difficult. Sleeping is weird. Keyboards/music fully on hold while I wait for range of movement to return.
What had happened was I was helping 3 other people carry a large metal cabinet from a loading dock into a moving truck and my foot slipped off the edge of the truck. I went down, and my corner of the cabinet went down, right onto my hand. Everyone was immediately like: oh no that was bad. I pulled my hand out from under the cabinet. I happened to be wearing heavy leather work gloves, so the fact that there was still blood everywhere was: concerning.
It’s hard to overstate how quickly I went into caretaker mode for the people around me. “I’m OK! I’m OK!” I assured them. “It’s not a big deal, It’s not broken!”
I scurried off to find the bathroom, spotted a first aid cabinet on the wall along the way and grabbed a few things.
Aside: Even before this happened, I have really come to appreciate a well-stocked and easily available first aid kit in my work and home life. You absolutely do not want to be scrounging around looking for things when you need them. Once I was touring a new office space and in the machine shop I couldn’t easily spot a first aid kit. I asked the building managers and THEY couldn’t easily find it either. It turned out to be down the other end of the shop, on the opposite side of a support column, facing away from anyone who would ever need to see it. I was like: Fuuuuck this place. IN the machine shop!
In the bathroom I pulled off my glove and there were two deep gashes on my index finger, bleeding profusely. I ran them under the water to clean them out a bit, wrapped my finger in paper towels, and then laid down on the floor and breathed. I was aware that my adrenaline was bouncing off the walls and was like “You are absolutely not going into shock on top of everything else.”
After a few minutes I felt more relaxed and clear-headed and the bleeding had mostly stopped, so I bandaged up my finger and went back and repeatedly reassured everyone that I was fine, it was fine, I’m sorry to worry everyone, totally my fault, yes I would go to urgent care, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.
And I did go to urgent care. And while I was sitting there for an hour (accidentally bleeding on their carpet) I was reflecting on my rush to comfort the people around me for having to react to my injury, and remembered my one and only interaction with the school counselor in 6th grade. Back then elementary schools didn’t have counselors, psychologists, all that. 6th grade was the first time this concept was introduced, and I imagine his mandate was to meet with each kid at least once that year.
So I got called in, and I’m already semi-wondering if I’m in trouble for something, because I was always worried I was in trouble for something. He has me sit down and asks how I’m doing. I immediately have to hold back a flood tears. No one has ever asked me this. I don’t even know what’s happening in the moment, I just know that whatever emotions and feelings he accidentally scraped loose need to be locked down. My instinct was: I don’t want this guy I am meeting for the first time to have to worry about me or take care of me. So I just say “I’m fine, I’m fine, nothing to report, everything’s fine,” desperately trying not to leak tears all over myself, until he sends me back to class. And that was the last time I thought about that until now.
What’s that about one might wonder. Not me though.
The people at urgent care were super nice and helpful. They confirmed it wasn’t broken, glued everything back together instead of stitches, which was fun for a change. At the end I thanked the PA for being so amazing and helpful and she said “No, thank you, I got into this work for the gross stuff, this was a really good one.” Helpful!
At home, afterwards, I located secondary and tertiary injuries I hadn’t even noticed (gigantic scrape along my left forearm, huge bruised swelling on my right shin).
The whole time I was thinking about something C said to me in high school. I was telling him a story about how I had tried to climb a tree in a snowstorm, slipped and fallen very far down, flat onto my back into the snow, such that it completely knocked the wind out of me. I just laid there in the snow, laughing. Because it was so scary and also so dumb.
It’s good to get a little hurt every once in a while, C said.
