Mutilation update

[rikibeth]

I'm cleared to go back to work. Derek says come in Wednesday. Yay!

The worst part of the follow-up today was the long soaking needed to get the special clotting dressing to come off. "I wish they wouldn't use that stuff," the nurse said. She had me soak it in saline and peroxide, which was surprisingly non-painful. Soak for a while, tease up the edges with tweezers, trim it with curved pointy scissors until she hit the spot where I winced, soak again, lather, rinse, repeat, for about an hour.

No more giant gauze mess on my hand. Bacitracin, fingertip bandage, secure it with a normal Band-aid. She gave me a few packets of Bacitracin and a handful of fingertip bandages to take home. Also a clever little plastic splint to keep me from knocking the "lacerated and avulsed" fingertip against anything and maybe making it bleed again, or giving myself a nasty jolt even if it didn't. Glove it and I'm good to go.

I have another follow-up on Thursday, I guess to make sure that it isn't getting infected.

She says it'll be about three months before the nail looks normal again. I do believe I'll make lace gloves my fashion statement for the summer.

Oh, and I guess I was in more pain than I realized on Friday morning; the nurse commented that my BP at triage had been something like 165/130! It was back down to its usual 110/60 this morning.

The tetanus shot injection site has a gaudy, purple-and-yellow bruise about 2"x3" on it. They were duly impressed.

I'm going to give the slicer a good solid minute to stop spinning before I ever try to take the slices out from under it again.

Comments

[kriz1818.livejournal.com]

Glad it's getting better and all! Lace gloves are nice. 8-)

[dj-ti-99.livejournal.com]

After I did the same thing while cleaning one of those things, they bought a chainmail glove to use with the slicer.

Glad to hear you're getting better. :-)

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I think I saw one of those -- I'll have to remember to use it! Thanks!

[sambear.livejournal.com]

I wish there were some way to give you instant comfort ...this must've been awful and is probably still pretty awful, but you're bearing up nicely. Glad to hear you're going back to work soon.

[kebbykate.livejournal.com]

So I guess things were better enough that you didn't need the Percocet? So glad things are healing up and that it wasn't any worse.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

Eh. OTC narcotics would have been useful the first night, when the shock wore off. Now the tetanus site hurts worse than the injury. It's not actually as ugly or as painful as some of the burns I've gotten in the course of business.

If we could change the damn drug laws in this country, and if we had universal health care so I didn't have to worry about properly establishing a worker's comp claim and could safely ignore it until-and-unless it got infected, it'd have been even less of an issue. Just icky!

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I figured I could sleep without recourse to it (and I was right), and I like Percocet just a little TOO much to feel comfortable about taking it when the situation is less than dire. But still, thank you!

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Excellent!

I hope the results of the follow-up are what you'd wish them to be.

[cad-red-ducati.livejournal.com]

glad it's getting better, it sounds wicked nasty!

[tubin.livejournal.com]

Oh, my, I ignore LJ for a couple weeks and horrible things happen! I'm glad you're doing better and sorry you got hurt.