Humor is a great accompaniment to receiving sutures. As the physician assistant sutured my finger laceration, he told me this was his third career (not humorous) and told me about his experience slicing his own finger (very humorous).
I had ended up on the receiving end of the needle and thread by carelessly attempting to slice frozen bread with a very sharp knife and without a cutting board—something I have been told on multiple occasions not to do. Maybe this time the lesson will stick.
As I tightly gripped my pointer finger against my thumb, my daughter ran for a bandage and extolled the virtues of applying pressure and using elevation in such situations. I had no desire to release my finger as I’m not a fan of watching blood pour out of my hands. But when I finally got the nerve to take a peak at the incision, I knew immediately that a Band-aid brand adhesive wasn’t going to cut it so to speak.
I headed to the ER, my husband cleverly picking the older car to drive in case I was dripping blood, although my daughter had thoughtfully handed me an old bath towel to wrap my hand in just to avoid difficult to remove bloodstains.
“Well, I hope the chili you made for dinner is bloody good,” my husband commented wryly as we sat waiting in the ER. Doubtful we would get any tonight as the waiting room was mostly full and no one was moving anywhere quickly.
The admitting nurse thoughtfully asked if my finger was still attached (which it was) while my daughter texted me to take the pressure off and get the blood flow going to move up my place in the ER line. As the TV show Chuck was about to start, I was okay sitting in the waiting room for a bit and watching TV. So I kept the pressure applied as my hand began leaking blood onto my towel wrap. Unfortunately halfway through Chuck, someone decided that the assorted menagerie of patients would prefer Monday night football and switched channels. I think we should have taken a vote and raising a bloody hand should have counted extra. In any case, I missed the second half of Chuck and so I have no idea if Chuck and Sarah managed to capture the bad guy or not. Now it was clearly time to remove the pressure and get seen sooner rather than later.
In the examining room, the nurse told me that day old blood stains were as hard to remove from crevices around fingernails as from white Ts. I didn’t believe her, but was glad she thoroughly cleaned my hand in any case.
Then after a lengthy wait with only the sound of a screaming child in the background, a physician’s assistant came in for suturing. Apparently only on Grey’s Anatomy do plastic surgeons hang around the ER.
“So do you know how to sew?” I asked.
“She means can you sew well,” my husband clarified.
He didn’t answer directly but did tell us about the time he cut his finger on a bread knife at a salad bar, tossed the knife and bread behind the salad bar and then while walking over to meet his friends at their table, passed out in the middle of the restaurant where everyone, but his friends saw him go down.
Clearly he had empathy as well as a more entertaining story. Guess I’ll find out if he also can sew when I get these 5 sutures removed.
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