I Don't Do Anything Halfway
Oct. 28th, 2009 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyspritePlan for tonight: finish making desserts for Crown Tourney - 3 more apple pies, another 70 shortbread cookies, and currant cake.
What really happened tonight: Spent 2 1/2 hours in emergency room getting my head sewn back together after trying to reenact the Birth of Athena using my own forehead and a particularly wicked-looking barbecue tool with a disturbingly sharp metal churchkey on the end.
I had started putting together the base ingredients for the currant cake, and was bending down to pick up an ingredient from the pantry floor. I didn't notice the Evil Barbecue Spatula Of Doom; it's been on the same shelf for two years. It noticed me, though, and I whacked my noggin on it but good.
And I figured that was it. Just a whack. I sat on the pantry floor, whining and cursing my stupidity and clutching my forehead, and my sainted husband came over to see what was wrong. "Just a bump," I said. "I'm being a baby."
"You're bleeding," he replied, and handed me a paper towel. And within a minute, I noticed that the blood had soaked through the paper towel and was running down my arms. A quick glance in the bathroom mirror showed me a gaping cut about as long as my thumb, and blood clotting in my eyebrow, and we decided that maybe I needed to go to the emergency room.
By the time we got there, I had bled through all of our gauze and several wads of paper towels. The triage nurse in the ER tried to reassure me that it couldn't be as bad as I had assumed, and that all scalp wounds bleed. Not for half an hour, I told her. You're disrupting the clot, she told me. I sighed and pressed harder.
Half an hour later, an assistant came to bandage it for me, so I could stop pressing. More gauze, wrapped and strapped around my head until I couldn't see through the layers over my eyes. That took almost 15 minutes to bleed through.
After another half hour, I was shuffled into a bed and a nurse came to look at the wound. When she started to take the bandages off, I warned her that it would be messy. She reassured me that there was no way it would still be bleeding. I told her it was, and she didn't quite scoff. Then she peeled the bandage back, peeked, and slammed it back down. "You've severed an artery."
It was awesome. There was spurting. I hope I never again have to experience the sensation of my own blood pooling in my ear as a physician's assistant desperately injects my head with lidocaine so she can try to find the responsible vessel and tie it closed.
Two and a half hours, one arterial ligation, nine stitches, and a lump the size of a goose egg later, and I am home. Somewhat woozy and giddy from shock and blood loss, and with what I hope is a rakish and piratical (not hideous and Frankensteinian) wound along my hairline above my left eye, and with orders to avoid strenuous physical activity for the next few days, but otherwise none the worse for wear.
Only me. Only I could manage to sever an artery in my forehead while baking a cake.
I'm just special that way.
What really happened tonight: Spent 2 1/2 hours in emergency room getting my head sewn back together after trying to reenact the Birth of Athena using my own forehead and a particularly wicked-looking barbecue tool with a disturbingly sharp metal churchkey on the end.
I had started putting together the base ingredients for the currant cake, and was bending down to pick up an ingredient from the pantry floor. I didn't notice the Evil Barbecue Spatula Of Doom; it's been on the same shelf for two years. It noticed me, though, and I whacked my noggin on it but good.
And I figured that was it. Just a whack. I sat on the pantry floor, whining and cursing my stupidity and clutching my forehead, and my sainted husband came over to see what was wrong. "Just a bump," I said. "I'm being a baby."
"You're bleeding," he replied, and handed me a paper towel. And within a minute, I noticed that the blood had soaked through the paper towel and was running down my arms. A quick glance in the bathroom mirror showed me a gaping cut about as long as my thumb, and blood clotting in my eyebrow, and we decided that maybe I needed to go to the emergency room.
By the time we got there, I had bled through all of our gauze and several wads of paper towels. The triage nurse in the ER tried to reassure me that it couldn't be as bad as I had assumed, and that all scalp wounds bleed. Not for half an hour, I told her. You're disrupting the clot, she told me. I sighed and pressed harder.
Half an hour later, an assistant came to bandage it for me, so I could stop pressing. More gauze, wrapped and strapped around my head until I couldn't see through the layers over my eyes. That took almost 15 minutes to bleed through.
After another half hour, I was shuffled into a bed and a nurse came to look at the wound. When she started to take the bandages off, I warned her that it would be messy. She reassured me that there was no way it would still be bleeding. I told her it was, and she didn't quite scoff. Then she peeled the bandage back, peeked, and slammed it back down. "You've severed an artery."
It was awesome. There was spurting. I hope I never again have to experience the sensation of my own blood pooling in my ear as a physician's assistant desperately injects my head with lidocaine so she can try to find the responsible vessel and tie it closed.
Two and a half hours, one arterial ligation, nine stitches, and a lump the size of a goose egg later, and I am home. Somewhat woozy and giddy from shock and blood loss, and with what I hope is a rakish and piratical (not hideous and Frankensteinian) wound along my hairline above my left eye, and with orders to avoid strenuous physical activity for the next few days, but otherwise none the worse for wear.
Only me. Only I could manage to sever an artery in my forehead while baking a cake.
I'm just special that way.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 12:49 am (UTC)Daaaaaayum. Wow. I'm glad you're ok. I've heard of extreme costuming before, but I'm pretty sure you didn't want to go as the victim of a zombie attack for Halloween...
I hope you heal quickly and as painlessly as possible. A pox on all vicious churchkeys!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 12:52 am (UTC)And I thought I had cooking stories...
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Date: 2009-10-29 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 01:00 am (UTC)Please do get better!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 01:01 am (UTC)You really should have some kind of "I've had medical training" card (veterinary would count for this) that could explain to the nurses that you actually know what you're talking about when you say that you're bleeding.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 01:24 am (UTC)Hope you're better soon.
PJW
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Date: 2009-10-29 01:35 am (UTC)I'm glad you're safely stitched up, and hope you feel better. Going to work the stitches into a costume for Saturday?
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 01:43 am (UTC)Here's hoping they gave you some good meds! I know I'd rather expect them under the circumstances. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 01:49 am (UTC)That's it....
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 02:25 am (UTC)The closest I can come to this is the gash in my leg from
helping with dinner when I was five - but that was just
bringing up a bottle of Sprite (tm) from the basement when
my jackass brother decided he had to have the same bottle
after I'd already picked it up...
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 03:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 01:44 am (UTC)I hope you heal quickly and cleanly.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 01:51 am (UTC)lets hope this takes care of our quotient of kitchen injuries for the event. please? i mean really when i said you get to be my drop-dead deputy in the kitchen, that wasn't an instruction :)
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 02:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 02:47 am (UTC)Still, there was spurting blood. That's gotta count for something.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 02:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 03:08 am (UTC)I'm glad it looks like you're going to be (mostly) ok. I hope it heals up pretty well, with minimal scarring.
*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 03:13 am (UTC)I do have a friend who has a quite an amazing level of clumsiness towards injuring herself; on one occasion, she managed to give herself a paper cut inside her nose.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 03:29 am (UTC)Now please rest. That had to be a terrifying experience, for all that you turned it into a humorous post.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 03:31 am (UTC)Second, just because *I* went to the ER before my last feast doesn't mean YOU have to.
Third, your last sentence pretty much sums it up.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 02:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 04:20 am (UTC)So, do we at least get to see a picture of the kitchen tool that took you down?
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 04:54 am (UTC)But seriously: I'm glad you're OK, even upbeat. Props to your husband for taking care of you.
..........
Date: 2009-10-29 07:21 am (UTC)Okay, but OVFF was good, right?
(more stunned silence)
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 07:40 am (UTC)I'm glad you are/will be ok.
I'd have thought you being a vet would've pulled some weight as an argument for "I know what I'm talking about"...
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Date: 2009-10-29 08:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 11:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 11:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 12:18 pm (UTC)(I hope you feel better soon - I'll be sending good thoughts your way!)
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 12:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 01:03 pm (UTC)I have to say, I laughed when I came to the line "you've severed an artery" and you followed that up with "It was awesome." Not sure if I could have been that cool about it...
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Date: 2009-10-29 01:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 02:04 pm (UTC)May this be the most injury you ever suffer cooking!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 03:04 pm (UTC)Having had a major forehead wound myself (slammed head first into a fireplace screen at high velocity) hopefully it will not scar very much, as mine did not.
*lots of hugs and a hand with the baking*
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 03:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 03:48 pm (UTC)Sorry I didn't get to chat at all at OVFF but glad you had a good time. I was at Reg table most of the con.
*hugs* again from all of us here.
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Date: 2009-10-29 05:31 pm (UTC)::hugs::
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Date: 2009-10-29 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 08:39 pm (UTC)(I've been pondering how to let my pure-silicone spatula cut me so I can watch it spend years of frustration trying to draw blood a second time. Alas, it would probably gang up with the set of knives that have drawn blood multiple times, and that's too much excitement for me.)
no subject
Date: 2009-10-29 08:40 pm (UTC)(Um. That sounds redundant, but it's not, kinda. Better, de-stressed, no longer woozy - and then fast healing.)
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Date: 2009-10-30 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 03:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-03 06:21 pm (UTC)