Frankenfinger

I wasn't planning on writing anything today as it was supposed to be a fairly low key day.  I slept in.  I unpacked some stuff.  I paid my tuition, and most importantly, I went to Whole Foods to buy things specifically for making myself dinner for the next few nights.  I'm not one of those people who is good at planning meals ahead of time, so a three-day dinner plan was something pretty adventurous and exciting for me.  Pretty normal stuff, right?  And then it began...

The first thing that sucked about today was that my electricity was turned off for like an hour or so because of a misunderstanding between SCE&G and myself.  Basically it's all clear and they now understand that they can suck it.

Once I had electricity back, I spent some time doing some things on the computer with iTunes and such, and at about 8:30, I decided I should probably get a move on with the food thing.  I wanted bruschetta, so I got this nice nice nice baguette and some decent produce at the store.  I was really looking forward to this fairly unbalanced meal.  Diced up the tomatoes, looking good.  Garlic...no problem.  Parsley and basil were a breeze.  Then came the red onion.  I really don't even like onions.  Really.  And I highly debated (at Whole Foods and again while I was chopping things up) just omitting the onion and having a lighter fruitier bruschetta.  But nooooo....I always follow the recipe the first time around and I wanted to see it from the recipe writer's point of view and maybe this would be the best bruschetta ever and I'd be thankful for this stupid onion.  

I sliced the thing in half with great ease and no tears.  It was the stupid little thing on the bottom...you know, the thing that you don't eat that's all gross and the peels all are attached to it.  I just had to remove it and then it would be smooth sailing.  Mhm.  Right.  I was almost through when by some freak force of nature, my hand that was holding the onion still slipped.  And simultaneously the knife decided, "Oh this onion doesn't seem so dense anymore!  I'll just slide right on through!"  At first I thought that I just kind of bumped the knife into my hand and it was all cool.  And then I started gushing blood all over the place.  Awesome.

I have never had a cut this bad before, so I have never involuntarily lost this much blood before.  I was freaking out.  I hadn't eaten all day and I was gushing blood...what if I passed out or died or turned into a unicorn or something else really ridiculous and bad?  So I followed my instincts.  I channeled everything I had every seen on a fake medical TV show, and I wrapped it up, squeezed it tight and held it way up over my head.  I then ran to my neighbor's door.

My neighbor, Jennifer, is in school about to graduate and become a physician's assistant.  Of course she'd know what to do.  I felt like a tool for disturbing them at 9:30 at night, but it had to be done.  She invited me in and took a look.  After a few minutes she'd stopped the bleeding, and I started feeling super nauseous.  I can't stand the sight of my own blood.  We rinsed it out with a saline solution and she came to the conclusion, "If you came into my office, I'd be giving you stitches."  Off to the E.R.

The particular E.R. I went to has to be one of the best ever.  Everybody was nice and human and accommodating.  My nurses joked around with me and we had a good time, considering the situation.  The doctor was nice enough to humor me and laugh with me and let me take pictures even though it's kind of a weird thing to do.  He performed what he called a "finger block" - basically he stuck me with a needle 4 time and my finger magically went numb in all the right places - and stitched me up.  I was proud of myself for being able to watch what was going on for once.  It was actually kind of a humorous situation once I determined that I wasn't going to die and they set my finger up in its own little surgical tent type thing.  Three stitches later, I'm back home.  I was having some issues feeling the tip of my finger, so I may or may not have to go to a hand specialist next week, as I may or may not have just nicked the nerve a little bit.

My super special dinner tonight ended up being Frosted Flakes...

Pictures follow.  This is where you stop scrolling if you have a ridiculously weak stomach.

The scene of the crime.

Oopsie.

My finger in its little mini surgical tent.

The Frankenfinger Monster.