willdabeast

Schmitty, Smoosh-key, Booty, BootyD, Big D,and regretfully Taco Bender. It was a weird ass nickname my parents had for me up till 'bout age 7.

Yep, Thumbs.

The first weekend of my second term at GMI (Freshman II, March '98), I was helping a friend make a ladder for his bunk. It was an old palette, so the saw kept binding in the wood.

"Here, let me do it. It's my saw, I know a few tricks," I told him.

One, two, thr--the saw jumped from the wood & buried itself in my left hand. The first joint of the index finger & the first thumb joint were laid open, the tendon that flexes the thumb was severed, and there was quite a bit of blood.

I did not panic. I grabbed my left wrist, elevated the wounded hand, said "Shit.", and walked to the bathroom. I spent a good ten minutes with my hand under the cold water faucet, watching the bones move around.

I wrapped up my hand & went back into my friend's room. "Dude, you need something? Jack, beer?"

"151'd be nice."

"Lemme see it." He looked at it. "You're going to the hospital."

"I don't need to go to the hospital. Just need to wrap it up & it'll heal on its own."

"You're going."

"Fine."

So began the SEVEN-AND-A-HALF HOUR ordeal at McLaren's ER. This being Flint, a stupid white boy who'd tried to cut his thumb off is a low priority.

Roughly five hours into it, I finally get to fill out paperwork (in triplicate with blood oozing out of my makeshift bandage) then I get to see the nurse. He takes one look at my thumb & asks me to flex it. I cannot. "Son, you just bought yourself the hand surgeon."

I got to wait another hour-and-a-half for the surgeon. For some reason, he went to Hurley first.

I really hadn't felt anything until he stuck the needle in my thumb & began digging around with it, scraping the tip along the bone. That's when my wounds began to sing.

I've felt some odd things in my life. Having forceps shoved between my skin & bone to fish around for the tendon, then having said tendon pulled towards my hand was by far the weirdest. It felt like a string was turning my arm inside-out.

I didn't get a cast, but I did get a splint wrapped in about five pounds of Ace bandage. Couldn't get it wet, couldn't sleep on it, couldn't remove it. Regardless of how much Betadine he had poured onto my thumb (I was afraid I'd have an orange thumb for the rest of my life), it smelled kinda funny after a while.


Two weeks later I got my stitches out. Why did I do immediately after returning to the dorms? I changed the transmission fluid in my S10 (automatic). Oh Lordy was my thumb stiff...