A gash, a dash, and a moral

Warning: If you are squeamish you may not want to read this post, there is a pretty gross picture in the text! (Note: I have decided, in the interest of letting friends keep their lunch down, to remove that photo!)

This morning I was minding my own business, cleaning the house, when the unexpected happened. The kind of nonsensical thing that can change lives. I opened the door to the entertainment center to put something away and the huge sheet of glass that sits behind the door came off it's hinges and sliced my forearm wide open, the likes of which you have never seen. Home alone and seeing this gaping hole, my first thought was, "Oh my God, what if I hit an artery!" I called Aunt Karen, the family Nurse Nell, who luckily lives around the corner. She took me to a local walk-in clinic where the nurse practitioner took one look at it and was like, "uhhhh, no". (Almost everyone who saw it today got a sick look on their face!) She said it was too close to tendons for her to mess with and directed me to the emergency room. So then Jim sweetly fetched me from there and took me to the nearest ER. The ER doctor looked at it and said "you have severed your tendon, I need to send you to a hand surgeon at Vanderbilt" Oh nooooo, don't you people know that I have a fear of anesthesia?? Hand surgery-really???? So we treked over there and ... a saving grace. A good natured resident explained to me that the the tendon I likely severed is one that is pretty much useless and 30% of people don't even have it to begin with! Once I proved to him that I had full feeling in that hand he agreed to stitch me up and send me home (rather than hand surgery to repair the tendon and six weeks in a cast)Thank goodness!!!
The one glimmer of relief I got during all this was ... hmm, I can blog about this! I proceeded to use Jim's cellphone to take a picture of the gaping wound. Here it is guys ...
(There it WAS, I am sparing anyone just now checking it out, but as you can see from comments, it was pretty grusome!)

(use imagination to envision what it might have looked like)
Purty, huh?

But, the stitches and


are making me feel


I am so, so thankful that that sheet of glass didn't get my main artery and even more thankful that it didn't fall on my little boy!!!! (He has been showing a lot of concern for mommy's "sick arm".) And thanks to Karen and Jim for running me around and talking me down!

I do think that there is one clear moral to this story ... housework is bad for you! ;)