This is kind of embarrassing ...

[beatrice_otter]

Day before yesterday, I was making dinner--chicken rice bake, easy recipe, tastes great.  It calls for a can of cream of mushroom soup, and one of cream of chicken.  You know those pop-tab lids Campbells has gone to the last couple of years to make them "easy to open"?  And are approximately ten times harder to open that just using a simple can opener?  Yeah.  I sliced my finger open when that sucker finally came off.  It bled a lot, but I got a band-aid on it and didn't think much about it.

This morning I took the band-aid off, and decided I needed to see the doctor.

Definitely should have been stitched.  (It's bigger than I thought it was.  There was too much blood to see the cut clearly.  Looking back, maybe that should have been a clue.  Possibly.)  It's deep.  It'll take a long time to heal.  Because of where it's located, if I move the finger too much it's likely to come open, so I'm not to move the finger.  Nor do anything that might get it dirty.  So no yardwork or washing pots by hand for the next few weeks unless I can do it one-handed.  (Did I mention that my "rent" for living at home over the summer is a certain number of hours of yardwork per month?)

Oh, and if that's not enough, the reason the tip of that finger feels slightly odd is that I probably cut through a few of the surface nerves.  But I still have full range of motion and feeling (it feels weird, but I can feel), so it's probably very slight nerve damage which will heal. 

From opening a %$&! can of soup.

Comments

[jedibuttercup]

Ouch! My mom did something like that once; slipped and jabbed the tip of a knife into the base of her hand, band-aided it, and waited to see the doctor until the next day when she noticed that it was deep and felt kind of strange, by which time it was too late to have stitches. No fun at all.

Sorry to hear that! Hope it heals well.

[beatrice_otter]

Thank you!

[thothmes]

A few years ago I was out in a parking lot by a local mall, and I was answering a question from my eighteen year old daughter, lifting out my youngest's baby carrier, and slamming the van door all at once. I had Major Multitasking Fail! and realized the van door was closed, and the upper two knuckles of my index finger were fully inside the van. My daughter had only a VT learner's permit, and we were across the river in NH, so we had to go into the nearby K-mart (drip, drip, drip, wait-for-it!, OWWWWW!), where they called me an ambulance (for a broken and very drippy finger) and a cop car to transport my daughters (since an ambulance won't handle a baby bucket for a passenger). Two weeks later I had a plate put in for the irreducible fracture, and some four months later I finally graduated from physical therapy. Nowadays Frankenfinger is not really distinguishable from the rest except it will not hyperextend like the others, and there is slight scarring, and slightly reduced sensitivity.

Now don't you feel ever so superior in your abilities. Your attempted autoamputation was far, far less vicious and effective!

That said - Ouchie! I hope it recovers quickly and well, and that your nerves [silly slow growing things that they are, mine were still reattaching circuits a full year after the fact] regrow themselves promptly and with active circuitry.

[beatrice_otter]

Thank you for the well-wishes. I never realized how many things require the use of the pinkie until I didn't have it temporarily ...

[labingi]

I hope your finger is better soon. I *hate* those lids!!!

[beatrice_otter]

Thank you. The whole pop-top thing--why? I get why they rounded the bottom of the cans, it makes them easier to stack, but when you combine it with the pop-top, you can't just turn the can over and use the can opener on the bottom. Aargh.