Doing Battle With Mandarin Oranges

There was a major battle in my kitchen this past week. It was between myself and a seemingly innocent can of mandarin oranges, the kind with the pull tab lid. Sorry to say, the mandarin oranges won. But the good news is that it gave this Lady of the House the opportunity to experience lovin' care from one of her children and the undivided attention of the medical personnel at our local urgent care facility. I don't take these side-benefits lightly due to the fact that I have been on the caregiving end of emergencies in this family for far too long!

I was busy in my kitchen Wednesday afternoon getting ready for some company. I had everything ready except for the yummy spinach salad with strawberries and those tasty little oranges. Now I don't know about all of you, but I have always had a love/hate relationship with can lids that have pull tabs. I love them because I don't have to bother with a can opener, but I hate them because of the muscle needed to yank that lid off. Well, that little lid didn't realize exactly how much muscle this woman had, and when I gave it a huge pull with my right hand, my left hand got in the way of the sharp-edged lid that came blasting off the can with the speed of a launched rocket. Specifically it was the middle finger on my left hand ... more about that later!

A gush of blood and I immediately put a death grip on my poor middle finger. I yelled for my 15 year old couch potato son to come to my aid. He slooowly came wondering up the stairs (and that was in his high gear), checked out the view and I yelled for him to get a rag, which to his credit he did (a bit more quickly) while gazing at me slack-jawed. I thought of my oldest Princess working on her beauty sleep in my bedroom, and asked Speedy Gonzalez to go wake her. Drum roll here ... tah dah ... Super Daughter to the rescue! By this point I was laying on the kitchen floor allowing the passing out feeling to pass - the cold sweats, ringing in the ears, eyes seeing double - and it wasn't from the sight of blood, cuz I've seen plenty of that in my 22 years of parenting! I had so much incredible pain, from the cut and from the continued death grip on my poor finger.

I asked Alli, in my best slurred voice, to call Aunt Julie, our very own family nurse who knows everything about burns, cuts, broken limbs, plus some! No answer ... call our pastor, who happens to be married to our family nurse, and might know of his wife's whereabouts, and if he didn't he could possibly come over and "pray me into Heaven", due to the fact that I had lost at least a pint of blood by this point! Anyway, as Alli frantically was making calls trying to get help, I also was instructing her on doing final preparations on the yummy dinner I was making ... "the potatoes need shredded cheese, oh and call Kim or Sarah and find out the amounts of sour cream and mayo".

Julie finally appeared and told me to get stitches even before checking the damage! Heck, I could've totally cut off my finger and she wouldn't even had known to be checking the garbage disposal! Then the dilemma of when to go and where? Should I go before company or after company? Should I head north of town for urgent care or into the big city for the ER? The statement was made that if I go to the ER I'd be there for hours, at which I reminded everyone that we have "frequent flyer miles" at that place, and surely I'd be moved to the head of the pack! After all, it WAS my middle finger!

Totally unaware of the drama going on in the house whilst they were basking in the sun and splashing without a care in the world, our swimming friends came in to say "thanks". Poor female friend/cousin saw me in one of my better moments and ooohed & aaahed appropriately. Thank goodness they are also cousins, because as I left to drive myself (yes, I'm stupid) to the urgent care, my male friend/cousin calls the place and tells them that his cousin cut her finger real bad and she's on her way. Seems he's got the place on speed dial, how cool is that?

I arrive and the receptionist lady looks at my upright, in your face, wrapped like the statue of liberty, middle finger, and sweetly says, "oh, you're the laceration"! You bet your booty woman, and you'd better get the blood transfusion ready, STAT! One tourniquet on my middle finger to check the damage, at which point I asked if I had hit any vital organs. A few incredibly painful numbing injections. Another tourniquet in order for the nurse practioner to better see her handiwork with a needle & thread. And I walked out of that place with 4 stitches, a wrapped middle finger that looked like a light bulb, and a prescription for antibiotics, all in a matter of 55 minutes! Pretty impressive!

I get back home to food ready, table set, and the entire family scurrying around. But the best part of all was the sympathetic looks from those who love me!

So I have the stitches for 7 days, which I am sure will not allow me to do much of anything around the house ... dishes, laundry, cleaning, you know, anything with water. Then I think I've convinced everyone that after the stitches come out, I will need another 7 days of recovery!