I was at work, putting a 45 bevel on a large piece of c-channel, the last piece mind you. as i moved the grinder along the surface I must have caught the thumbof the leather glove I wore. thus causing it to bite in through the glove and right into my thumb. I shook my hand by reflex and pulled the glove off, it didn’t really hurt, just felt weird. and that is when I saw how bad it was. right along the nail was a trench that was over 3/16″ wide, at the deepest part about 3/16″ deep, and traveling about an inch. the grinder cauterized most of the blood vessels luckly. so off to the hospital I went.

the occupational clinic sent me to the ER for them to look at it first to see if it needed stitches. it did, so as I waited in the ounge I found no good magazines.

they gave me a light up pager/coaster thing you see at some restaurants, lol. when I was finally checked out initially and a room opened i sat back and watched the Sci-fi channel in between the nurses and the doctors as the preped me, waited for my thumb to go numb and give me a TB shot.

now as a side note, just this morning I made the stupid mistake of thinking to myself “with all this rust coated iron I am working with and getting occasional nicks, I should really get a TB shot” just shoot me.

the only part with the hospital visit that sucked was getting the injections to numb my thumb. the doctor made several injections around the base of my thumb to numb the whole thing. the initial stick hurt, mut when she patially pulled it out and angled it and pushed it back in to hit a different section hurt and freaked me out a bit as much as the needle was bending around. after an hour and a pre-stitch second injection into the wound itself since I could feel a little bit still we were ready to go. one of the stitches they had to go through the nail to get it.

pictures will be posted in a couple of days. only after surgery pics, my camer was at home, and I didn’t think about my phone at the time. the really bad thing is I have an optic trackball mouse and the gauze covered thumb has no grip to roll the ball, lol