What Happened (period or question mark)

since i was getting a lot of different questions on facebook about what happened to my thumb, i thought i would use this as an opportunity to start the blog ive long been wanting to write but have been afraid to start due to my fear of being deemed a heretic or, much worse, uninteresting and irrelevant. i figured that sawing my own finger off with a table saw is probably more interesting to read about than most other subjects i might use for a first blog post, so consider this to be my first entry on what is likely to be a very random, thematically diverse and potentially very short-lived blog.

first of all, please excuse the lack of proper punctuation and capitalization. As a newly-rendered one-fingered typist, im intentionally choosing efficiency over perfection.

the short answers to the questions about what happened are:

• i cut about an inch of my thumb off while cutting a piece of shelving on my table saw
• its my left thumb and im right handed, so that's good
• yes, i'll still be able to hold a beer bottle
• no, it didnt spew blood like Dan Akroyd pretending to be Julia Child on SNL
  
• yes, the pain was severe and it still is at times
• yes, this will impede my ability to write for a while
  

for those of you interested in the gory details, here you go.

i was at home alone working in the garage where i was cutting some shelves for the inside of a medicine cabinet. dana and the girls were at church. i had opted to stay home, as i usually do these days (i'll write another post about that later, under the heading of religious anti-establishmentarianism). i had just finished cutting a board and was pulling my hand back toward me when i felt a little tap on my thumb. i looked down expecting to see a small nick and couldnt really make sense at first of what i was looking at. it was red and shredded looking but surprisingly wasnt spewing blood; in fact it wasnt really bleeding at all. it took me a few seconds before i realized "oh, i think i just cut the end of my thumb off." it was surreal.

i remember being confused because there was so little blood anywhere (there were just three drops on the boards i'd just cut - thats it). so for a few seconds i was not sure what to make of it all. but once it sunk in what had happened, i got a little freaked out. i grabbed a big wad of paper towel and applied pressure to the cut and then walked around in circles a few times shooting off a barrage of f-bombs. i then looked around to see if i could find the tip of my thumb. i found it on the garage floor behind me. my thumbnail was still intact on the piece that had been cut off.

i thought about calling my neighbor for help, but then quickly realized that this was serious enough that i probably needed to get some proper medical attention asap. i pulled my cellphone out of my pocket and called 911. the dispatcher dispatched an ambulance and then said she was going to stay on the phone with me until the ambulance arrived. she told me to sit down and keep my left hand elevated. she then asked if i had a ziploc to save the stub. i put the stub in the bag. she then told me to put the bag in some cold water, so i told her i'd need to go in the house to do that. she asked if i felt strong enough to walk and i said i did. i then turned off all the lights in the garage, and was alert enough to also turn off the propane heater i'd been using (i thought i might REALLY look stupid if i not only cut my thumb off but also burned my house down in the same event).

man, this takes forever to type with one finger. and it hurts like hell, too. i can only type for about 15 minutes at a time before the pain becomes so intense that i need to lay down with my hand elevated.

back to the story...

i went in the house, put the ziploc in some cold water and waited at the dining room table for the emt's to arrive. they arrived about 15 mins after i called 911, which, considering i live about 15 mins from the nearest fire station, seemed like they made good time.

the emt dressed my wound and i walked out to the ambulance on my own. by this time the pain was intense. he told me that he would give me some pain meds as soon as he did everything else he needed to do first: get my vitals, hook me up to an IV, get me some oxygen, etc. we were probably 20 mins away from my house in evergreen (a community in the mountains outside of denver) when i finally got the pain meds, and it was excruciating waiting that long. the pain meds made my head a little foggy but my thumb still hurt like crazy. i kept asking for more meds. by the time we arived at the hospital he said he'd given me the maximum dosage of the strongest pain meds he was allowed to give me by law.

they took me to the hospital in denver that they said was the best for doing reattachments. dana's dad, dennis, lives real close to that hospital so i called him and he arrived at the hospital about 5 minutes after i did. the hand surgeon arrived about 20-30 mins later, looked at the wound, and informed me that he wouldnt be able to reattach the part i'd cut off. he said that the arteries on the end of the thumb are so tiny that it's pretty much impossible to tie them up and reconnect everything. i wish i had asked more questions about that but i was in too much of a fog by then to be able to think very well.

dana and the girls arrived a few minutes later. dennis took sara and casey to lunch and dana waited with me. they recommended general anesthesia for the surgery, which i happily agreed to. it took about 45 mins to sew it closed. the cut happened between the thumbnail and the knuckle, and the surgeon said they saved the joint and didnt have to take any more of the bone than the saw had already taken. so it seems, assuming that everything heals ok and with no infection, that i'll end up with a small stub just beyond the joint. all things considered, that's probably a lot better than it could have turned out.

we left the hospital at about 4 pm. i'd placed the call to 911 on my cell at 10:18 am.

lets see, what am i missing? oh yeah, the recovery. my hand is wrapped in a soft cast right now which will stay on until next monday. then i'll go back to the surgeon for him to look at it. that should be a weird unveiling. im not sure what to expect after that but i suspect my left hand will be out of commission for several weeks.

the pain. i have an overall pain that feels like my thumb is wrapped in the wire of an electric fence that is used to keep the horses in the corral. it feels like a constant, electrically-charged pain. the percoset and the other oxycodone med they prescribed me don't seem to alleviate this general pain very much. or maybe, this is what it feels like when the meds are working and it would be much worse without them.

that's kind of the status quo as far as the pain. then from time to time i have shots of really intense pain, like the pain you get when you first stub your toe or when you try to walk on a foot that has fallen asleep and you get a shot of pain that feels like thousands of tiny needles stabbing you all at once.

let's see, what else? thanks to this new limitation of only being able to type with one finger and for only short spells, i probably wont be able to do any paid writing work for a while. dana's just starting a new consulting job next week that will take awhile to ramp up, so things will be a little tight for a couple of months but we should be able to squeak by if things dont get any worse.

thats about all i can think of to report.

thanks for all your messages, calls and prayers. its reassuring to hear from so many of you and to be able to take inventory of how many great friends we have. the humorous comments are most appreciated and so far have done a lot to keep me out of depression and self-pity. ive been able to remain pretty stoic about the whole ordeal so far. im not sure if ill be able to stay this positive or if ill eventually lose it. so far so good.

well, there you have it. ill write more about my thumb later, and eventually will begin to post some entries about my faith that, while unrelated to this one thematically, will probably be as nauseating to some of you as this one was.