I've told this story so many times I feel like my memory of the event and its subsequent consequences have been juxtaposed with the tale.
The headline: Concession Stand Bartender Requires Nine Stitches in Two Fingers
The story goes like this:
Only an hour and a half into my bartending shift on Sunday evening (this is a good thing - more on that later), as I was unscrewing the cap of a glass-sized bottle of wine, disaster struck. Instead if the cap twisting off, the top half of the neck broke off in my right hand. Naturally, when the tension released... well, it's like when you're playing tug-of-war and the opponent's tugging really hard, and you just let go, and you get that recoil... so my hand slipped right across the broken edge of the bottle that I was holding in my left hand.
I looked down, and the first thing I noticed was that I had two pieces of glass, one in each hand. Only after that did I see the blood well up from my knuckles. Holding my fingers in my other hand, I wrapped a towel around them while the stand manager called our supervisor, who took me to the ranger station. The ranger on duty wrapped my fingers in gauze and tape to await the Fire & Rescue crew, who always attend concerts, thank goodness!
Got a ride in the back of the ambulance (first time for that) to the hospital, approved for worker's comp by my employer, which is very important. I got to skip the lobby because I rode the ambulance, and sat on a cot in the "sub-waiting area". Chatted with the Fire & Rescue team while they completed their paperwork and I waited for the doctor.
The doctor stitched me up pretty quickly, but I can't say I enjoyed the process. Surprise, right? Actually the worst part was watching my fingers swell with the local anaesthetic - he put so much in my finger that it looked almost twice its normal size (aside from being mangled and bloody). After that, the actual sewing of flesh was not so bad. I read a little, because my fingers looked disturbingly gross. Anyways, what with the ambulance and getting into the hospital ahead of a rush, I spent tops 3 hours total there.
Not much pain yet - I attribute that to shock, then anaesthetic, and now... a high tolerance of pain? Though admittedly banging the stitches on my desk does hurt. And I feel handicapped. Typing with eight fingers, especially for the generations that learned "Home Keys" is intensely frustrating, and I have to put things down before I open doors. Oh yeah, and I have this huge white bandage in place of my index and middle fingers. It's hard to hide, that.
Ten days from now the stitches come out and hopefully I can go back to my normal routines.
The headline: Concession Stand Bartender Requires Nine Stitches in Two Fingers
The story goes like this:
Only an hour and a half into my bartending shift on Sunday evening (this is a good thing - more on that later), as I was unscrewing the cap of a glass-sized bottle of wine, disaster struck. Instead if the cap twisting off, the top half of the neck broke off in my right hand. Naturally, when the tension released... well, it's like when you're playing tug-of-war and the opponent's tugging really hard, and you just let go, and you get that recoil... so my hand slipped right across the broken edge of the bottle that I was holding in my left hand.
I looked down, and the first thing I noticed was that I had two pieces of glass, one in each hand. Only after that did I see the blood well up from my knuckles. Holding my fingers in my other hand, I wrapped a towel around them while the stand manager called our supervisor, who took me to the ranger station. The ranger on duty wrapped my fingers in gauze and tape to await the Fire & Rescue crew, who always attend concerts, thank goodness!
Got a ride in the back of the ambulance (first time for that) to the hospital, approved for worker's comp by my employer, which is very important. I got to skip the lobby because I rode the ambulance, and sat on a cot in the "sub-waiting area". Chatted with the Fire & Rescue team while they completed their paperwork and I waited for the doctor.
The doctor stitched me up pretty quickly, but I can't say I enjoyed the process. Surprise, right? Actually the worst part was watching my fingers swell with the local anaesthetic - he put so much in my finger that it looked almost twice its normal size (aside from being mangled and bloody). After that, the actual sewing of flesh was not so bad. I read a little, because my fingers looked disturbingly gross. Anyways, what with the ambulance and getting into the hospital ahead of a rush, I spent tops 3 hours total there.
Not much pain yet - I attribute that to shock, then anaesthetic, and now... a high tolerance of pain? Though admittedly banging the stitches on my desk does hurt. And I feel handicapped. Typing with eight fingers, especially for the generations that learned "Home Keys" is intensely frustrating, and I have to put things down before I open doors. Oh yeah, and I have this huge white bandage in place of my index and middle fingers. It's hard to hide, that.
Ten days from now the stitches come out and hopefully I can go back to my normal routines.
