Nothing So Poetic As A Blackbird

There is the moment before and the moment just after. Wallace Stevens captured it much beautifully in his poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird:"

     I do not know which to prefer,
     The beauty of inflections
     Or the beauty of innuendoes,
     The blackbird whistling
     Or just after.

For me, it was nothing so poetic as that blackbird. It was instead a mandoline that I have used dozens of times before, a zucchini, and a moment of lapsed attention.

First impression: immediate searing pain.

Second impression: there was a whole lot of blood running down my hand.

I had lopped off a small (tiny, really!) piece of my pinkie and a truly tiny nick of my ring finger on my right hand. (Fingers bleed a lot. A whole lot.)

Somehow I moved my hand away before the blood cascaded into the zucchini. Somehow I grabbed a towel to staunch the blood.

Pressure. Apply lots of pressure. As someone who has dealt with major bleeding issues since developing myeloma, I knew all about applying firm pressure.

Ten minutes later, the blood was still flowing freely if I let up on the pressure. I phoned Warren at his office, to give him a heads up and for some moral support. No, I didn't need him home; I just needed some reassurance that I would be okay. Baffled by my odd request but more than willing to please me, Warren said "you'll be okay."

I eventually got the fingers wrapped in gauze, with paper tape and bandages over that. I could see the blood soaking through, but it was soaking more slowly than before, so I was ready to finish what I had started. I cleaned up the bathroom so it no longer looked like a scrapped scene from Psycho ("No, let's have him stab her in the shower, not over the sink").  I went downstairs and finished cutting and bagging the zucchini for the freezer. I think in my bravely soldiering on mode I even did the dishes.

Heck, I even joked about it on my Facebook page: Mandoline: 2  Fingers: 0 (which set off some clever jokes from my musical friend Karen about mandolins and sharp instruments).

When Warren came home, he asked if we should head to the ER. Oh no, it's much better. True, I couldn't do much, but really, it was much better. Besides, there was no way a doctor could suture the cuts. That much even I could tell.

Supper, dishes, reading, bedtime. It'd be nice to change the bandages, I told Warren, and get something fresh on my fingers. I'm sure it's done bleeding.

What a great idea that was, until I tried it.

My fingers post-ER trip 

Warren poked his head in the bathroom and saw the blood running down my arm. "We're going to the ER now, " he said. At 11:45 p.m., we walked in, I held up my hand wrapped in a bloody dishtowel, and we went from there.

The ER doctor confirmed that, indeed, she could not suture the wounds. "That's why you didn't go to the ER when this happened, isn't it?" she asked. Yep, got me dead to rights. She went on to say they could put a wrapping on them that contained a coagulation agent. Oh, and when did I last have a tetanus shot? Outside the parameter, trust me.

All the drama was over and I was home in bed by 1:00 a.m., my fingers heavily wrapped.

The next morning, I posted on Facebook again: "...tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church-door, but 'tis enough, 'twill serve." And for good measure, I added "tis but a scratch" and a link to the Black Knight scene from "Monty Python and The Holy Grail."

That was last Friday afternoon. Today I'm down to a small bandage on the pinkie and nothing on the ring finger. I'm moving back towards normal, whatever that may be. True, Warren is on alert when I make a move towards sharp objects in the kitchen. "Let me get that," he says.

And my dad dropped off more zucchini today.