Butterflies

I am, by necessity, very good in general with first aid.  Ever since I was a child, due to both clumsiness and stupidity, I have had bad encounters with sharp objects.  

Actually, most of the encounters were because of stupidity:

• When I was 7,  I wanted to know what would happen to my right forefinger if I turned it in a little pencil sharpener.  (My nail came off like a pencil shaving.)
• When I was 12, I tried to kick open a French door.  (30 stitches in my heel and knee.)
• When I was 13, a glass broke in my hand as I was washing it.  (Stitches between  my left thumb and forefinger.  Not my fault, really.)
• Many times I sliced off the tip of my left forefinger while cutting bagels.  (Most of the time the tip grew back and actually calloused; once I had to get it stitched back on.)

I mention only the most memorable accidents.  By the time I was 12, my family doctor had taught me how to create a butterfly bandage in order to close small wounds and save me the trip to the emergency room for stitches.  This is a skill I have employed for over 40 years, now: cut a 1.5" strip of surgical tape; hold it in the thumb and forefinger - if those digits are working - and close those fingers with the sticky side of the tape out; cut little notches just so > <;  after stopping the bleeding with pressure and elevation, pull the butterfly to close the gaping laceration.

As I got older, the injuries became more creative.  I became an avian wildlife rehabilitator and did triage on injured wild birds, so although my skills were put to good purpose, the game area grew.  I was no longer limited to knives and glass!  

• A great blue heron (with a 4 inch beak) stabbed me and missed my right eye by half an inch.  (Inexperience handling herons helps you learn how to properly handle herons and control their heads.)
• A Barn owl with an injured left leg grabbed the base of my right forefinger with its mouse-killing talons.  Not my fault!  I was handling the bird gingerly because it had its leg injured by a buzz saw!  (My finger curled and my hand swelled for a few days.)
• I stabbed myself in the thigh with a scalpel after a crow necropsy during West Nile season.  That was so, so stupid.   (After stopping the blood, I left the infirmary and no one noticed my shredded, bleeding scrubs, because I was working in the infirmary with shredding, bleeding birds.  That's the picture I included.)

It all kinds of blends into a lifetime bubble of cuts and blood.

This brings me to my most recent, stupid accident.  

My friend Marcie gave me a lovely gift when she returned from Alaska last summer:  a little portable folding blade based on an Inuit tool.  It was attached to a slip-ring to put on a  keyring.  It was very sharp, Marcie warned; that is when the bells should have rung for me to thank her and just put the thing away.  But instead I did attach it to my keyring.

And it has taken 6 months to prove hazardous.  This is what I did to myself:  as the car warmed up this morning I opened a mailing envelope, which was fortified and inpenetrable without a blade.  I had a blade, and conscientiously and carefully slit open the package.  It was a book.  I read the first page and was excited to read the rest.

I put the keys in the ignition, drove to work, removed the keys, put them in my pocket, then remembered to check the doors by grabbing the keys in my pocket to auto-lock the doors.

Like most of the self-maimings, nothing hurt immediately.  My finger was slit deep (again, the poor forefinger, this time the right one).  Before it started bleeding, I grabbed it and held it tight.  I raised my hands over my head (pressure and elevation to stop bleeding).  I went to the front office at work to ask if there was betadine anywhere.  There was not.  I got the first aid kit.  I took it to the bathrom sink. I took out peroxide, gauze pads, bandaids and neosporin.  I got scissors.  I got a co-worker.  I showed her how to fashion a butterfly bandage from a bandaid.  

All this time I was holding off the wound from bleeding, and now it hurt.  The more I moved the more it hurt.  I leaned into the sink to finally take my hand off the wound and clean it.  It didn't look good, bleeding badly once the pressure was removed.  

I poured peroxide over the now-bubbling laceration and again applied pressure with gauze.  I went to my office, sat down, peeking occasionally to see if the bleeding stopped.  It did not.  

Finally, my finger fell off.  No, it didn't!  The butterfly applied by another co-worker, by the end of the day my hugely wrapped finger was safe, clean and secured from further assault.  

I removed the blade from my key ring later that day.  I did it with one hand.  I am, by necessity, very good using one hand.