That's a Cut!

 

Albert and I visited the local Asian grocery store Friday night to pick up poke. Our plan was to make a pot of sushi rice and a little side salad and enjoy an easy, delicious dinner together. Seems like a legit, empty-nester date night amiright??

Albert took the Romaine out of the fridge and was chopping for about thirty seconds, when I heard, “OW.” Albert had just added the secret ingredient to his Jeffrey Dahmer Salad. He had cut off the tip of his thumb and made the WORST SALAD EVER.

Holy smokes, there was SO. MUCH. BLOOD. You see, there is a tiny arteriole near the tip of your thumb, which is why you can feel your pulse there. Go ahead. I’ll wait while you try it.

Yeah, I couldn’t feel it either. But I know it’s there, and sometimes you can feel it apparently. So Albert’s thumb was gushing and dripping blood BUT I DIDN’T PANIC! You see, this same thing happened to me almost exactly 10 years ago at the end of January 2011 while I was making salad. Whenever I get frustrated with Albert, something weird like this happens to let me know that we are definitely meant to experience this life on Earth together.

I had been chopping up some leftover green beans to toss into our dinner salad when SNIP! The tip of my thumb AND a sliver of my fingernail were no longer attached to my body. It happened so fast that it didn’t even hurt. Our dinner salad had just morphed into thumb-thing completely inedible.

Albert and the kids were outside, and they were surprised to come in to see me holding my hand in a paper towel and the counter besprinkled with vegetables and blood. I bled through towel after towel trying to stop the flow, but my wounded digit wouldn’t stop gushing. Albert finally helped me pile on a giant wad of gauze and wrap my thumb up tight before we went to bed.

The next morning, the kids in my Sunday School class prayed for my bulbous, throbbing thumb. That afternoon, I wanted to inspect the damage and change the dressing, but the gauze was melded to my skin. Albert tried helping me soak and pry it off gently, but it hurt so much that I started sweating and thought I might throw up or faint.

I visited my doctor Monday morning and we had a giggle about how everyone says veggies are so good for you, but what the hell do they know?? After giving me a just-in-case tetanus shot, she soaked my flat-headed thumb in some warm water and Hibiclens for a while, then was able to remove all but that last thready layer of gauze.

The human body really is a miracle. Over the course of just a couple of days, my skin had begun to heal and incorporated some of the gauze into new layers of tissue. My doctor offered me a little lidocaine, but that seemed like way too much trouble. PLUS the thought of getting a SHOT into the tip of my already-pretty-sore thumb made me squirm. I have experienced HOURS birthing three babies without pain medication. I could certainly bear one more second of discomfort.

So I was more than ready for Albert’s emergency. I bound his thumb up, making sure to place a generous dollop of Neosporin between his stumpy thumb and wad of gauze. Albert wanted the bandage REALLY tight in order to stop the bleeding. We all know now a tourniquet is essentially warranted to stop blood from pulsing out of that arteriole. Of course, this didn’t feel very good, and Albert got up in the middle of the night to loosen the bandage, allowing blood to start seeping again.

That next morning, I offered my still-actively-bleeding husband to create that beautiful, bulbous wad of gauze that worked so well for me ten years ago. Of course, he declined my offer, since it is a husband’s obligation to say no to every good idea that doesn’t originate from his own brain. “Maybe I should go to the doctor,” he countered. So dramatic. Give that man an Oscar.

At first I started trying to convince Albert that I knew what needed to be done and that he didn’t need to go to the doctor, but then I stopped. Brene Brown and Brad Reedy host two podcasts that are so full of wisdom and all the things I need to know. Over the course of one month, both of these sages interviewed Harriet Lerner, who blew me away with her sensible, approachable, compassionate teaching. I gobbled up her book, “The Dance of Anger” and gave away copies for Christmas—but only to people who know I hold ZERO ulterior motives when I gift self-help books.

Harriet Lerner’s book helped me identify myself as an “over-functioner,” which means that I need to keep my damned nose out of everyone else’s business and let them make their own choices. So when Albert resisted, I started pushing back, but then I stopped. He’s a big boy. He is capable of making his own choices. If he wants to go see the doctor, that is fine. Thanks for the reminder, Auntie Harriet.

Then this really weird thing that happened. I stopped talking abruptly, and Albert thought I was mad because he wasn’t obeying my commands. He knows that I have been working on my tendency to over-function, so he understood when I told him that I was just correcting myself and that I respect his choices. Then he said, “Do you really think a pile of gauze will work?”

So I reminded him of how he helped me ten years ago.

Me: “Do you remember what you said to me when I was so scared that the bleeding wouldn’t stop?”

He: “Put pressure on it?”

Me: “No.”

He: “Raise your arm above your head?”

Me: “Nope.”

He: “What did I say?”

Me: “You said, ‘You’re not going to bleed to death from your thumb.’”

We have a joke in our family that our dogs don’t help around the house because they have no thumbs. It’s interesting that a single non-functional thumb didn’t stop me from doing much ten years ago, although I did have a pretty hard time getting my hair into a ponytail. Tying my sneakers took some creativity as well.

Albert opened a discussion with our dogs with his newfound sympathy for their thumblessness. But our dogs were adamant that Dad’s injured claw would not preclude him from participating in household chores.

And that, my friends, is a cut and a wrap.

Thank you for reading!