The Baboon Congress

I Ain’t Got Time To Bleed

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Header image by Kathleen Tyler Conklin via Flickr – Creative Commons 2.0

Today’s post comes from Wessew

I cut myself again today.

I mention “again” as cuts are an all too frequent occurrence in the flooring installation trade. There are sharp thingys everywhere just waiting to deliver a laceration. This time it was the sheet vinyl itself that I mishandled resulting in what can be described as a paper cut that bleeds. But, as Governor Ventura famously said in the movie Predator, “I ain’t got time to bleed”, so I put a dab of antiseptic on the wound and covered it with duct tape. (I confess to have watched too many Red Green Shows) The damage today was minimal. No sutures required.

On one occasion I had just finished gluing a floor in an empty rental apartment and stood up to roll the material into the wet adhesive. Unfortunately, the stove exhaust vent got in the way and delivered unto me a nasty gash in my scalp. I had no choice but to take my shirt off for use as a compress and finish that part of the job one-handed.

Scalp wounds bleed A LOT but I had no time to bleed as the flooring material needed to get into fresh adhesive. The emergency room gave me a dozen sutures that day. Duct tape would not have been effective in this case.

Another notable cut happened when I was cleaning a glue-coated trowel. The material had to be scraped off, so I was using a razor sharp, four inch wide, half inch deep wall paper scraper. It slipped and my left thumb got in the way. It was bad. Very bad. About two inches long and a quarter of an inch deep. I squeezed it together and proceeded to the emergency room which was one sixteenth of an inch away; just behind a sheet of plastic. It comes in handy to sometimes work in a hospital. They didn’t even make me wait and
fill out the paperwork. From the time of the accident to the time the doctor gave me a local anesthetic, was less than five minutes. The doctor and I chatted a bit as he worked on me and I casually enquired when I would be able to play the piano. For some reason he didn’t see the punchline coming because he said, “Probably in two days”. To which I replied, “Two days? Wonderful. I never could before.” His assistant practically fell on the floor laughing. He groaned and gave me an extra stitch.

What keeps you in stitches?

78 thoughts on “I Ain’t Got Time To Bleed”

  2. I needed glasses when I was 5 due to severe astigmarism, but no one knew and i couldn’t tell as I thought the world was just blurry and it was normal to squint all the time . Once I was running after my dad as he went into a bank and I slammed into a plate glass window that I thought was an open doorway, falling backwards on the sidewalk. The glass didn’t break, but I was quite embarrassed. Mom and dad finally realzed something was amiss when i walked into a large piece of jagged window glass that was propped up on the floor against the wall of my dad’s coffee shop. I didn’t see it and cut my right shin and needed 10 stitches.

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    1. They didn’t use to screen kids for hearing and vision. A friend did terribly at school because she was nearly blind, but nobody knew. One day a teacher began to suspect her vision was poor. She told Elinor to keep moving forward, stopping only when the blackboard was clearly visible. Elinor kept walking until her nose was almost touching the blackboard.

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      1. In Denmark they did. I deliberately tried to fail my vision test when entering first grade because I wanted glasses. I thought the looked cool. But no dice, they were on to me. We were also all screened for tuberculosis.

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  3. I’ve never had an accidental injury that required stitches, happily. I do have a scar on my eyebrow from a roller skating accident when I was about eleven or twelve. Skated right into a post. Bled a lot, but it looked worse than it was.

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  4. I am an incredibly boring person if you need good accident stories. I’ve pondered this a lot, wondering what is wrong with me because I haven’t had accidents. I was an active kid. I rode a bike all over town, played “the splits” throwing knives into the ground by my feet, fired shotguns, ice skated, shot bows and arrows, etc, etc. I was an active kid. I took chances. And I never had an accident worth mentioning.

    Oh, I just thought of one. The story is too complicated to describe in detail, but a buddy once shot me in the foot with his archery kit. I can tell you it is a special thrill to look at your foot and see an arrow sticking out of it like you see in old cowboy/Indian movies. But though the sight of that was weird, I didn’t suffer much damage. The arrow was planted more in my boot than in me. It still gave my doctor a smile as he entered into my medical log, “Arrow wound in right great toe.”

    Other than that, my medical history is boring. Never broke a leg. Never had a significant cut or burn. Never messed myself up falling from a bike. Never had stitches.

    By contrast, my sister’s younger boy (also named Steve) has a looooong list of emergency room visits for crazy stuff he did. There were times I wondered if he’d survive childhood, given his wild and experimental nature.

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      1. Just cautious. It runs in the family. Liam, who turns seven in a few weeks, hasn’t had one accident yet. When he was five my daughter saw him walking with scissors and barked out a warning, telling him to be careful. In a small voice (not really meant to be heard) Liam said, “When have you ever seen me not be careful?”

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        3. Especially the one that is on the left in the photo. He has had that glint in his eyes since a very young age. It spells trouble.

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        5. Reminds me of a classic George Carlin line. He’s talking about misbehaving as a kid. Mom asks, “What are you doing??” in an accusing voice. Little George replies, “I’m NOT running with scissors!” 🙂

          C in O

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  5. Lots of war stories involving pointy sharp things because like wessew, that’s my work (smaller scale, so mostly I can just tape up and keep going). I’ve only run a needle into myself once with the sewing machine. I think the fear of that is overrated.

    I can pretty much remember how I got every single little scar, mainly because I don’t get one very often, so they are memorable.

    Also like Jesse and wessew, these incidents occur when I really don’t have time to spend bleeding, so it is tape up and go (it’s only afterwards that I have time to think about what I did, then I need a little lie-down).

    The biggest scar I have ever gotten will be memorialized on its 18th anniversary tomorrow as I join Sherillee in having a “young adult” hanging about the place.

    It has been a busy half year trying to get all the ducks in a row to get him officially “launched” next year, but I am happy to say the applications and essays are DONE!

    And I don’t know about the rest of you, but 2016 is gonna leave a scar.

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  6. No accidental stitches here either. YA had stitches just once when she was about 6 or 7. I had been battling dandelions with my handy dandy dandelion digger in the backyard http://static.webshopapp.com/shops/126024/files/060401102/800x800x1/dandelion-digger.jpg

    As I moved onto the next chore, she told me I missed one and took the digger (what was I thinking… haven’t a clue even now). Just a few moments later, she was standing in front of me with her hand over her eye and blood seeping out. You’ve all seen photos of her; you know she didn’t poke her eye out, but that’s sure what I thought at the time. It only need 3 stitches right above her eyebrow, but I was horrified at what kind of bacteria might be on that digger and wanted it to be seriously, emergency room cleaned!

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  7. I have noticeable burn marks on hands and forearms from oven racks and roasting pans over the years. Sometimes I worry people will think I am a cutter.

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  8. What kept me in stitches last week was the movie Sullivan’s Travels. Joel McCrea plays a director of low brow comedies who wants to make a serious film. To do so, he feels the need to experience the harsh realities of life and so disguises himself as a hobo. One of the funniest movies of all time.

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  9. I’m the cook in the house so every year or two I manage to fail in an attempt to slice off a fingertip with my chef’s knife. Only a problem when guests are coming for dinner and the food needs to be prepared. One time I had to tape a baggie over my bandaged pinky so the blood wouldn’t drip all over the food. I didn’t go for stitches but probably should have because it was bleeding so profusely.

    I’ve had a few broken bones over the years (collarbone, ribs, nose a few times) and some stitches (mostly as a kid). My latest visit to the Urgent Care was a few years ago when I was playing pickup hockey at the local outdoor rink. I was skating around the goal, caught my blade in a deep rut, and flew head first into a steel post behind the board that was used to support the wire fencing above the boards to keep pucks from leaving the rink.
    Rung my bell pretty good, Impact was above and below my left eye. Required seven stitches in my eyebrow, broke the cheekbone just below the eye socket, and forced a contact lens into the nether regions of my eyeball.

    My wife got on my big time because I drove home first with my stocking cap stanching the blood, and asked her casually, “Can you close this up with band-aids, or should I go to the doctor?” After she had retrieved her lower jaw from the floor, she hustled me to the Urgent Care, and they took care of me posthaste.

    The real bugger of it all was when we got the EOBs from the insurance company. Total cost for Urgent Care plus an emergency visit to the ophthalmologist to find my contact lens and make sure I wouldn’t go blind from the injury was $1,100. Contrast that with the visit to the family doctor when I was ten years old and needed four stitches from the neighbor’s German Shepherd attacking me and scratching my face. That probably cost about $50 in today’s dollars. Of course, he didn’t use novocaine or any other painkiller to numb my face while he sewed me up. Maybe that’s where all the extra cost comes into play today. 😉

    Chris in Owatonna

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  10. A few things I’ve learned:
    -If you can avoid it, don’t use an aluminum ruler as a straight edge when cutting with a utility knife. Aluminum is soft.
    -When you are cutting a bunch of boards on a paper cutter and you have a nice rhythm going, don’t look over your shoulder to talk to somebody.
    -As MIG says, it’s not that easy to run a sewing machine needle through your finger, but it can be done. Once is usually enough.

    The only time I’ve needed stitches, it was for a work-related injury but not from the usual hazards. It was at the company holiday party and I was helping out at the beverage table, opening some bottles of wine. Inexplicably, one just collapsed in my hand, cutting me across the palm and the inside of three fingers. It bled a lot. So with my hand wrapped in a bloody towel I was taken to the emergency room. I didn’t count the stitches but with the several gashes there were several runs of stitches. That was forty years ago and I can still find the scars if I look closely.

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    1. yup, once with the sewing machine, and I will say it had to do mostly with working stupid.

      I remember exactly what I was sewing (sparkley spots on a tree frog, thanks for asking) and instead of using a stiletto to guide the edge under the foot, I put my index finger in there and crunch! Right through the nail, so all the bleeding was under the nail, tetanus shot was up-to-date, so carry on and get that frog done!

      I’m pretty sure I was sleep deprived at the time, because about 2 weeks later, that finger still ached. My boy did not ever go gentle into that good naptime, so I was holding him and finally getting him to sleep on my lap when I noticed that there was a little something poking out under my nail. Sure enough, teensy shard of needle in there.

      Getting that child to sleep was a major undertaking and I figured, it’s been there for two weeks, another 15 minutes(or so) won’t matter….

      Healed right up after that needle splinter was out.

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      1. I have a similar story. Note to all: seeing machine needle in the finger really, really, really hurts a lot! The tetnus shot is a piece of cake compared to the original injury

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  12. My dad always picked me up after school when I was in the elementary grades. One day he showed up at my Grade 5 classroom with his right hand swathed in a towel, blood everywhere, to tell me that I needed to get a ride from my mom since he got his hand in the lawnmower. He needed surgery and had the last digit of his fourth finger and pinkie finger amputated since they were so mangled.

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  13. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    I have had very few stitches, however, that does not mean I did not need them. In childhood growing up with farm people, nobody “needed” stitches unless maiming or death might be a result of the injury. When I was 6 years old I was running to the outhouse which was the topic of the last post. I ran into a wire gizmo which was invisible in dusk light. A wire jabbed my leg to the bone where I still have scar. No Dr. No stitches. Just a rag wrapped around the leg. It really hurt. I did not sleep that night due to the pain.

    Grandpa’s finger was cut off in the corn sheller. Somebody dug around in the corn to find the tip, then they drove him the 6 miles to Pipestone to the hospital. He did get stitches for that, but they could not sew the tip back on. This was considered an injury worthy of a Dr.’s care.

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    1. Several years ago I walked into the house from doing an errand. I heard a loud “SNAP-BANG” as I walked in. My husband was driving to repair the oven door. The snap-bang was a spring loaded gizmo which caught his finger. He turned around with his hand gushing.

      I ran him to urgent care very quickly for stitches.

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    2. When i had the stitches in my shin, the doctor told mom that I shouldn’t put weight on my leg for a couple of days. Instead of wasting money on crutches, mom told me to just hop on my good leg. That got really tiring after a while.

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    3. Farming is truly dangerous. My rancher/farmer friend Larry is like Vincent van Gogh, missing two thirds of his right ear. Larry used to talk so much about his bar fights that I assumed somebody bit off the ear, but I guess it was snatched off by a combine he was trying to get unstuck.

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      1. Farming is incredibly dangerous! In my large family alone, there are many deaths and injuries. Dad was terrified of horses because of the long list of his family members who were killed by horses (part of his family owned the livery in Nevada, Iowa. They imported and sold work horses from S. Dakota prior to tractors). In mom’s family my cousin was killed on a combine, my uncle was gored by his bull, and Grandpa lost his finger in the corn sheller.

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  14. tools period.
    i have this pointy thumb from a table saw
    scars all over my hands from chisels, knifes, handsaws and glass (i used to do picture framing)

    And dumb cheesy comedies like Monty Python and Airplane

    and woodcarving. my rules was if i didn’t bleed on it it wasn’t any good

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    1. i take a lot of aspirin for pain (and please don’t lecture me about it) so lab techs love me but ER doctors and nurses hate me

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  15. I don’t believe I’ve ever had stitches, but have had a couple memorable, bloody accidents.

    1. I was quite young and at someone else’s house, a lot of people were there and us kids were running around the yard. I banged my shin into a concrete retaining wall and could see my shin bone. That hurt, and I remember my mom changing the bandage every day for quite a while.

    2. I worked in a restaurant kitchen for a while and, of course, got knife cuts semi-frequently. But when I cut my finger on the meat slicer, my boss took me to the hospital. No stitches, but got it cleaned and bandaged professionally. I think I should have stayed lower on the totem pole (dishwasher) instead of working my way up to prep cook.

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  17. One more and this one has no blood, VS.

    This was just a few years ago. I wanted to go to the downtown library on a Sunday afternoon and decided to ride my bike. Get some exercise, don’t pollute the air, all those noble thoughts. Well, at some point, I needed to cross the light rail tracks. I was careful to check for oncoming trains, but didn’t realize that if you cross the tracks at an angle, the tracks will grab your bike and throw it down to the ground. I banged up my leg and arm pretty good. Once I was home, I just sat there with ice on all the painful spots and tried to not cry with the spasms of pain that wracked my body. Didn’t break anything, just got bruised and very sore. I never did make it to the library.

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  18. Sandy’s stitches are hurting today, but we are getting positive results.

    OT Miss Tailgater 2016: state truck spraying deicer on main business street, not sure why. Big sign on it said “Stay back 150 feet.” Young woman tailgated right up to the bumper with her wipers going for three blocks.

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  19. Sorry VS but here is another bloody story. In elementary school, the back door was one of those heavy fire doors with big hinges. I was standing next to the door with my right fingers resting on top of the middle hinge. Someone opened the door and the tips of my 4th and pinkie fingers slid into the hinge and got caught. I screamed and scared my friends to the point that they froze. A teacher finally came to the rescue, opened the door, and pulled by fingers out. The 4th finger escaped harm but the pinkie was sliced open from tip to first joint. The teachers took me to the basement bathroom by going around the school instead of through it to avoid spilling blood on the floor. I have a lovely scar from that misadventure.
    I have had stitches (and most recently staples) from assorted injuries/accidents/surgeries but none compare to my split finger story. I did cut a finger once while slicing a bagel – fortunately no stitches necessary for that one.

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    1. My daughter has an interesting scar from childhood. She was visiting the home of a daycare friend when someone offered her a hamburger. She reached for it and got nailed by a psycho dog. Really messed up the hand. Needed stitches. But she was pleased at the time because she was having trouble keeping “right and left” straight in school. After the dog attack that was all clarified. She knew her “dog-bite hand” was her right. She still uses that fact to keep right and left sorted out.

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        1. Oh, no! My daughter grew up in a home that had two or three good-sized dogs in it at all times. The dogs were virtually family members, partly because all our dogs were distinctive characters. My daughter has loved and trusted dogs all her life. The one that bit her was messed up in some way. It later attacked another child and was euthanized.

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  20. I remember when playing in a vacant next-door lot, a rusty nail going into my (bare) foot when I was about 5, had to have a tetanus shot. When I was about 40 I did it again, walking around a boat-building yard across from friends in Princeton-by-the-Sea, CA. Had to have another tetanus shot.

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  21. My right femur broken in two places in a sledding accident when I was three. I remember it vividly. No blood, but excruciating pain. Spent six weeks in the hospital as a result. Lots of other cuts and bruises over the years, but only a couple that resulted in ER visits.

    The time I cracked my head open on a diving board in Basel comes to mind. Scalp wounds bleed profusely, and I can report that standing under a warm shower doesn’t stem the flow but makes it rather look like a proverbial blood bath. A couple of stitches and plenty of Aspirin for a few days took care of it. A few years later when I married an American GI my dad would blame that injury on having done permanent brain damage.

    Then there was the time while in college I broke my nose after being catapulted off a teeter-totter. I landed, nose first, on the iron cross bar on which the teeter-totter was mounted. Surprisingly little blood was involved, but it hurt like hell. An X-ray determined that the nose had lots of hairline fractures, but since it was still intact, there was nothing more to do than be careful not to bump it. The doctor said he could put a splint on it, but it wouldn’t really do much to protect the nose, but it would alert others to the fact that I had an injury. As it turned out, no splint was necessary to alert anyone that I had a problem. The following morning I awoke with two huge black and blue eyes and so much swelling I could barely open them. A professor in one of my classes, started class by saying “I know everyone here is wondering what happened. Why don’t you just tell us, and get it over with?” Don’t know what was more embarrassing: the way I looked or admitting to falling off a teeter-totter. It was a colorful few weeks.

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    1. Teeter totters are not for tots. We had one on our grade school playground that was a real child butt buster. It had a long, long board and the picot was set fairly high. Mean kids would bail out with no warning, leaving the kid on the other end to crash.

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      1. I’ve never encountered “picot” except in the textile context. Useful to be hip to the jargon should I find myself in a room full of seesaw designers.

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      2. Believe it or not, I wasn’t being snarky about “picot”. In French, it means small peak, so that’s plausible. And when I googled “picot of seesaw” I actually got a couple of instances, both in relation to mathematical problems, so the usage had a technical whiff. As is probably apparent, I love obscure vocabulary, so I was thrilled to find I could now speak Seesaw.

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  22. Clearly Baboons respond to food and recipe talk, book talk, and now we can add a third topic: injury! Maybe we need a side blog for injuries to match BBC and the cookbook?

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  23. OK. I haven’t told my most scary and memorable one. It’s really still very painful to recall.

    It was shortly after my 16th birthday, and about a month before my sister’s confirmation. Mom had gone on a rare date with a neighbor to see a movie. It was early May of 1959.

    We were a bunch of neighborhood kids fooling around in our front yard. One of the boys, a big heavy kid, and as I recall, pretty stupid, had a propensity for tormenting others. He grabbed my sister and twisted her arms behind her back and wouldn’t let her go. I ran into the house and grabbed a glass of water – intending to throw it in his face, and force him to let her go. He, instead, pushed her toward me, and her face collided with the glass. It shattered and cut her face pretty badly.

    To this day she has a nasty scar covering her cheek. Thankfully, she didn’t lose an eye.

    Because of all the trauma around Randi’s injury, no one noticed that I too had suffered an injury in the process. I had a deep cut and a severed nerve at the base of my index finger. A fragment of glass was lodged in the wound, and it wouldn’t heal. Months later the shard of glass made it’s way to the surface and was removed. Years and years went by when I had no feeling in that finger. Today it seems to be back to normal, and the scar is barely detectable. Hers is.

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  26. I do all my own repairs on my rentals and I have many hand scars as evidence. You had vinyl. I have had nails, sharp tools, material stab me, scrape me, bump my head, jam my fingers, I even had a hoe slap me once when I accidentally stepped on the wide end of it (no pun intended).

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