I was chopping some vegetables in preparation for a soup for tomorrow's mid day meal when I got distracted talking to my son. Then, I stepped a bit and my foot landed right on my loving cat's front paw. I did not know she had come and laid down next to me while I was chopping. She screamed and I reacted and stumbled a bit, then lost control of my razor sharp, heavy chopping knife. As I recovered my balance my left index finger came into contact with the sharp edge of the blade as it fell to the floor.
Now I know not to try and catch a falling knife. Too dangerous! But I was trying to get off my sweet kitty's paw and I cut my left index finger's first knuckle down to the bone.
There was an immediate flush of lost blood which freaked out my son, and it hurt, but trying to keep my freaked out and panicking son from freaking out even more as quarter sized drops of blood began to go from five to ten to twenty to more like a stream trail to the sink before I could get cold water on it and assess the damage, he had completely lost it.
I had a situation to deal with and his thinking that "I have to save Dad!!!" just got in my way.
My finger is fine and all bandaged up now.
Now maybe I am wrong, but I got him over to the sink where I was running cold water over my injury in order to assess the incident (that is when I realized how serious my cut finger was. Hell I could see my guts moving around in there and a clear view of just how white live bone is) and I showed him that, yes you can have your skin cut open and lose some blood and as long as you take care of the injury quickly and do not panic, you will be fine. (A lesson he really needed to learn)
Not the first time I have had a deep cut, but only the second time he has seen any amount of blood like this.
He saw all that blood and wanted to dial 911, FFS! His intentions were protective, but way far removed from reality.
I "made" him look at my injury to see it clearly under the running water and as I worked hydrogen peroxide into the cut. Then I asked for his help to bandage it.
He was afraid that I needed to get to the hospital right away, but I showed him how the blood was stopping, compared to where we were two minutes ago.
I told him that I am going to need a special tool that we have in the freezer, out in the garage.
"You have medical tools in the freezer?" Well, yeah and if you could go get two of those ice cream bars we have out there, we can use the sticks to make a good bandage. "How?!?" Let's have a couple of ice cream bars and I will show you.
Any way, I showed him that since the injury was directly on a knuckle, I had to immobilize the joint for a few hours so that the cut could close up and begin to heal.
Getting his mind to function and realize that even a nasty cut is not necessarily life threatening seemed to be the next step, so eating ice cream to reveal medical equipment seemed like a decent diversion. Besides, I needed something to stabilize the finger over night.
It has been an hour and he is still very attentive and still a bit worried. I keep showing him that the bleeding has completely stopped and yeah, it hurts, but it is perfectly fine.
