Playing The Mandolin

Last night I did something stupid. Something very stupid.

I wanted to have a nice dinner for Jess. So, I decided since it snowed, it would be a nice contrast to have burgers on the grill. So I went to the grocery store and got what I needed. I waited for Jess to come home, and when she did, she wanted to go shopping for a new winter coat. I had no problem with this and we set off the the store. About 2 hours later, we came home with a new coat in hand. We were both starving, and could not wait to eat. I went out and fired up the grill while Jess pre-heated the oven for the french fries. I told her that I would cook dinner and to go start her homework. I when and got the mandolin slicer out and started to slice up some tomatoes. By this time, Jess had come out to see what was going on. I was just getting done peeling the onion and about to start slicing. I started going to town with the onion on the mandolin slicer when I felt something cold, followed by a loud gasp by Jess. I looked down and all I saw was blood. I quickly turned around and put my finger under cold water. Yep, I had done it this time. I took the top of my right ring finger off in the slicer.

For those of you who don’t know, this is a mandolin slicer.

That long gray part is the razor sharp blade. Now imagine running and onion up and down there as fast as you can to get nice clean slices. Now image you finger in the blade instead of the onion. Yeah…that hurts! There is a hand guard that came with it, but to be honest, I only use that with potatoes. Not anymore. I will be using that little guy from now on no matter what I am cutting.

So, seeing that my finger would not stop bleeding, we wrapped it in a wash cloth and headed to the emergency room. We of course had to wait a few hours to get seen, but in the end there was really nothing they could do. The piece I cut off was all flesh (and Jess threw it away) so they couldn’t stitch anything back on. All they could do was put something call gelfoam on what was the tip of my finger to try and stop the bleeding, wrapped it up in gauze, and gave me a tetanus shot. I was told to keep the gauze on for 24hrs, and not to use my hand during that time. Also, that this was gong to take a long time to heal.

Great.

Oh yeah, there was also a shit-ton of pain involved in all of this.

So, here is what my finger looks like right now.

I take the bandage off at 9pm tonight. After that, I have a nice box of medical supplies Jess and I went out and picked up.

I’ll be using everything in this box for the foreseeable future.

I’m actually kinds fascinated about all of this. I have to wonder how much of my finger will grow back. I’m going to take some pictures tonight of my finger without the bandage so you can see how much I really took off. They may not be the best pics tough since they said the gelfoam will create a ‘skin’ over the wound to keep it from bleeding. We’ll see what happens in about 90 minutes or so.