Sunday, April 03, 2005

Ouch

Warning: Graphic description forthcoming. Do not continue if you are squeamish

Lack of posting on my part for the near future is due to an accident I had yesterday afternoon. I was attempting to replace a halogen light lens cover, and the whole system came crashing down on me. Fortunately, I am largely unharmed, although there is a rather nifty looking patch where the bumps on the lens cover introduced themselves to my upper forehead.

As well, my right hand is currently bandaged rather heavily. I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but when the structure fell down, it managed to catch a piece of my right wrist. A rather large piece, in fact. After composing myself, and testing my head to see if it was bleeding, I happened to glance at my right hand (which was not hurting at the time). I had to do a double-take, because what I saw was rather shocking. Rather, what I didn't see was shocking. I did not see a large portion of skin that normally prevents the blood in my veins from squirting all over the place. Upon closer examination, the large cut (perhaps 4 centimeters long, around one centimeter wide, and varying degrees of depth) began to slowly turn from a nice pink skin color, to a deep red, as the blood began to bubble up through the remaining layers of new, fresh skin. I looked at my co-workers, and said "I am going to the hospital to get this looked at!"

Upon driving to the hospital, I quickly happened upon a nurse. She took a quick look at it, and told me to sit down and wait while she dealt with other patients (insert generic Canada Health Act/Socialized Medicine/Wasted Public Services comment here).
When she finally did get around to cleaning up my wound, I watched and listened and she told me that it was too large for stitches, but probably not large enough to warrant a skin graft. I wasn't too upset about that, since the thought of having a piece of skin from my ass transfered to my hand was a little unsettling, to say the least. After about a half hour of treatment at the hospital, she bandaged the wound and sent me on my way. But almost right away, I noticed the the bleeding was not stopping. The "second skin" bandage she placed on the cut was not preventing the blood from flowing (I am not a doctor, but I am quite sure that this link describes what she placed upon the cut). When I woke up this morning, a small but prominent amount of blood had seeped through the bandage.
My second trip the hospital in as many days was pretty much identical. Same nurse even helped me. She removed the bandage, cleaned the wound, and replaced it with the same "second skin" pad. So far so good though, I am two hours removed from my latest hospital visit, and there is no sign of blood showing.

In conclusion, this may be the last post from me for a little while. Even with two hands, I'm not very fast typist. With one hand bandaged up, this post has taken half an hour.

Maybe the Pei-master will make an appearance or two in my absence.