we had purchased christmas trees to decorate our large group room with at st. john. so as soon as i arrived, i grabbed a pair of scissors and went to open them and get them setup for the kids. after all, i was going to teach/reteach them the motions to the 12 days of christmas (now a tradition at the stone) and we needed to set the tone. i opened up the scissors to cut the tape and as i was slicing the tape, somehow my right pointer finger slipped and i sliced my it instead. it hurt. i gave it one look and knew it was deep. i could not stand to look at it any more, but i needed someone to verify that it was indeed as deep as i thought and if it was deep enough to get stitches.
i ran into our resource room where erin was working and tried to get her to look at it and help me. she promptly handed me a tissue as i was bleeding everywhere and said that she could not look at it. my adrenaline had kicked in and i could not stand still. the cut did not hurt as bad as i would have thought, but the blood and the uncertainty of stitches was making me crazy! i asked (it might have been more like yelling) erin to get me some butterflies from the first aid kit. as she was looking, i just walked into the hall and screamed loud!
i started walking down the hall toward the foyer when i saw one of my lead volunteers walking up. i ran and opened the door and immediately greeted him with a "look at my finger. does this need stitches?"
he must have seen the panic on my face and just took me to sit down on one of the couches to work on stopping the bleeding first (things i should have known - after all i am first aid certified!). people started to gather as rob was helping me and trying to put a butterfly on my wound. a couple that i work with started looking up clinics i could go to (none of which were open yet - it was before 8:00am still) so we started texting all the doctors and nurses that we knew would be coming to church.
well after a bit, one of the doctors that we texted (an OBGYN) came up to look at it. he brought stuff to stitch me up right there on site if i wanted. i figured being an obgyn he has done his fair share of stitches, so i let him. :) we walked right on back to green room bathroom and began. i am not going to lie, the lidacaine shots were the worst part. i squeezed the mess out of my friend melissa's hand (who was with me the entire time btw) and forgot to breathe. and just to put my pain tolerance in perspective for you, i did not cry when i broke my arm. so this hurt real bad. but within a few minutes it was awesome. i got 2 stitches and a very clean wound. thank you dr. erwin!
the pain has been minimal this week, until i bump my finger into something. looks like will be keeping my finger, though i am nervous using scissors still. i actually made erin setup those trees for me because i could not bring myself to open the boxes. i made lots of jokes about my finger as i had to hold it up all day. sang lots of "this little light of mine." introduced myself as lilo and pointed to my finger and said "this is stitch."
i have some pictures that melissa took below. i won't post the ones where she is stitching me up because they make me squeamish! but if you are interested, you can follow @mdithmer on twitter and see them there.
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| me. clearly proud of my stupidity. |
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| melissa may have jokingly tweeted that stew was going to sew me up and a few people believed it. so we took a pic afterward. |
1 comment:
Dear Stitchy: hope you are back to your nimble self soon!
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