Well, I learned a valuable lesson, and got extremely lucky in the process. I was cutting a watermelon in the sink. I got to the knot where the stem attaches which is tougher than the rest of the skin. I decided to cut up instead of down, because I didn't want to risk slamming my knife edge into the sink. Note, my hand was not in line with the direction the blade was facing,
but... while I wasn't being careless, I wasn't being careful
enough.
The knife went through the knot, and when it got through, the force I was applying coupled with the lack of resistance sent my hand holding the knife suddenly upward. And my body mechanics during that upward acceleration brought my left hand in line with my right hand. And it all happened faster than was possible to mentally process. It just suddenly went from the knife being in the watermelon to being embedded in my thumb.
When I was in my early teens, I had a similar cut in my right index finger (courtesy of my sister), and I responded the same way now as then -- I immediately clamped it shut. Holding the one hand in the other hand, I made my way to my neighbor's house and asked if they wouldn't mind giving me a ride to the hospital. And now for some gratuitous graphic photos.
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Note that the knife also caught the palm of my hand just below the fingers. Just an eighth of an inch more, and things would have been sooooo much worse!
That was Thursday, almost two weeks ago. Here's where it get's interesting, IMO. Last October I was diagnosed with PV, a form of blood cancer. Basically, I have too much blood in my blood. Red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, hemoglobin, everything that makes blood blood, I have too much of it. When I was first diagnosed with it, they took 5 pints of blood from me in the span of 15 days to get the numbers down to the point where the doctors weren't panicking. (Why do I have too much blood in my blood? They did a bone marrow biopsy on me, and apparently I have too much marrow in my marrow. But all the bone marrow cells look normal -- no scar tissue, no misshapen cells, so... ?) The crazy thing to me was that my blood pressure was completely normal. So when they first told me about the diagnosis, I couldn't stop hearing it in Monty Python voice. "Sorry sir, you have too much blood in your blood. Constable Higgins!"
Since October, the numbers have come down. The blood lettings have become less frequent (once every 2-3 weeks) and I'm on medication. But here's where it relates to the cut -- I suspect that I'm healing faster than normal. I certainly didn't heal this fast when I got cut when I was younger. I also haven't had any colds or anything over the last year or so. Anyway, this is what it looks like now.
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Apart from the cut itself, the only thing I'm experiencing is some numbness on the outside of the thumb toward the tip. I don't know whether the feeling there will fully recover. It did with my finger, so I'm hoping.
Anyway, please learn from my mistake. Cut down, not up, and don't apply more force than should be necessary to cut whatever you're cutting. If you find yourself having to apply force, do something different. Change your angle, get a sharper knife, something. I was fortunate. Be safe, not fortunate.
