Yesterday I had a bit of a mishap involving a bread knife and my left middle finger. Basically I cut part of my nail/finger instead of the pita I was cutting. I've been asked for details:

I'm still not entirely sure how I managed the cut, I was slicing circles of pita into triangles and suddenly I was staring at the cut on my fingernail waiting for it to bleed. You know those 30 seconds of shock where it doesn't hurt and doesn't bleed? I spent those wishing it wouldn't start bleeding at all. That it was just a little cut in my nail...

Then it started to gush. I wandered a bit in a panic, trying to figure out if I knew of an urgent care in the area. I came to the conclusion I did not and so googled the closest hospital. I grabbed a cab with my bloody wad of paper towels. On the way I texted loml to tell him of my ER visit. I was cutting up the pita for a party we were attending...so I told him if he wanted to get there at the beginning of the party he would need to go without me. My cabbie dropped me off at the hospital, and proceeded to chastise me about how it's rude to ask your cabdriver to take you to side streets. Because its impossible to find another fare. Yeah.

So, I get to the ER, sign in. There's maybe two people ahead of me, a few more come in after. I wait probably 30 minutes before I'm called back. The nurse immediately goes to find a tetanus shot and stabs me with it. My doctor shows up - and is a more obviously gay version of Neil Patrick Harris (quite lovable). He says he wants to take off the sliced piece of the nail, to make sure I haven't cut really deep. Proceeds to numb my finger with two shots. The shots themselves hurt and then burned. Once the stuff was in me, everyone left me in a room to get numb and I proceeded to react weirdly to the numbing agent. First, I got boiling hot - sheen of sweat over my whole body style. Followed by nausea, dizziness and a distinct feeling of being a bit high. This all faded and led to a lightly numb finger - I think cute gay doctor made a bit of a tactical error - the base of my finger is where he shot me. And it was numb. But the tip? Only lightly numb. So when he cut off my nail? Possibly one of the most painful things that has ever happened to me. Applying pressure to stop the bleeding? Also horrible. Antiseptic spray before bandage application? Burningly horrible.

All in all, painful. I left with a heavily bandaged finger tip that can't handle pressure. I didn't come away with any plan as to when I should remove the bandage. And I have a sinking feeling that when I do remove it I am going to relive some of that pain all over again.

My cab driver on the ride home was much nicer than the first- wished me a happy holidays. Then I got to spend the evening holiday partying and making loml do things he didn't want to because it would make me feel better. Happy six months loml, wasn't that a fun way to observe the passage of time?