Blood Clots

The title of this is not an adjective+noun; it's a noun+verb. Someday I'm going to learn that I ought not go to the emergency room just because there's blood spurting. Blood clots. It may take longer than you'd like, but it does clot.

I managed to have a canning jar explode in my hands yesterday. I'm not one to go to ER for stitches: we have butterfly bandages here. But this was deep and it was really bleeding and it was on a joint; the pain was as bad as anything I'd ever experienced; and I was getting pretty woozy. So Rachel took me to ER. An hour later, by the time we got there and I saw the doctor, the cut had clotted and it wasn't looking so bad. We shouldn't have gone.

I talked the doctor out of giving me a tetanus shot. But I wasn't as forceful and determined when it came to the ER Tech telling me that, before I left, she had to clean up the wounds. I asked questions; I debated with her a bit about it. But I allowed her to do it. That was a big mistake. She opened up the cut, and it was nearly another hour before the blood stopped again. That'll teach me to be compliant with medical professionals.

I think the pain is not from the cut. One of my fingers that isn't cut has the same pain but to a much smaller degree. There is a tingliness and numbness (but that sounds contradictory!) that must be from getting banged rather than from the laceration. In my experience, closing a finger in a car door or bashing it with a hammer is a pain much different from a cut, even a doozy of a cut. But I'm managing to type through the pain, even though the simple act of changing the bandage starts me hyperventilating again. Rachel laughs at me; I'm so addicted to blogging.