October 30, 2002: Emergency in the East Bay!

Over the weekend I was at my parents house. They were in the Southwest, touring, you know, and I was using their new iMac to make mix CDs. I was also babysitting my brother.

Now, when I make mix CDs I go out all the way, you know. Liner notes and things. Designing something with the Photoshop® and then printing that out and, you know, cutting it with the paper cutter so that it will fit into the so-called "Jewel Box."

Well, I suppose the image to the right tells what happened next. A small piece of my finger got caught and went flying.

Blood = everywhere. Me = freaking out. Time = 4am Sunday night. I was just about to go to bed. Actually cutting the piece of paper I was cutting was the last thing I was planning to do.

So, I'm holding my finger under the water that comes from the faucet in the kitchen.

And it's just totally bleeding. I didn't know what to do. I was applying firm pressure with a towel. I was getting kind of dizzy, perhaps even hyperventilating. So, I called my sister to see if she had any thoughts of what I should do. She didn't answer. So I left a long rambling message. Then I called Pete and he said I should maybe call 911.

So I did. So, these two ambulance guys come and I'm like, "I didn't know if I should call or not, I didn't know how serious it was." And the ambulance guys are like, "Dude, we aren't even supposed to consider it an emergency unless you cut your arm off ABOVE the elbow."

Oops. Like, if I just cut my hand off I guess I'm supposed to toss it in the freezer, finish watching Rockford Files, and then maybe take the bus down to the hospital.

So these guys are like, "we're supposed to tell you to go to the hospital first chance you get, and we're supposed to offer you a ride down -- which we'll do -- but we hear there might be a fire out near Blackhawk or something, so, uh, see you later."

And then I tried to change the bandages on Tuesday, and I find out that the ambulance dudes didn't do it right. They weren't supposed to just put gauze straight down onto the cut, because what happened was it stuck all in the wound. So, I spend a couple of hours soaking it in water and slowly cutting off the gauze. But then there's still some in there, so I start slowly pulling them out, one by one. Now this is very painful. I'm like sliding these pieces of string across this open wound. Well, it's the network of gauze that is keeping it from bleeding, so I pull one more gauze string and the thing starts bleeding like mad. So I rebandage it and there's still some gauze in the wound.

Anyway, this is all very painful. The photos taken are from about 2 or so days later. It's healing nicely, and I guess it's not as big a deal as I thought, when I first saw part of my finger go flying against the wall.