Easter is coming closer and closer and I'm getting ready for the holiday because this is a big one for my family. There is Easter candy all over the house for weeks and the kiddos are all hyped up and jumping around and excited because that old Easter bunny came.
One Easter, my mother brought home this giant Easter bunny that she got from Seattle's Best Chocolate, and I mean, this thing was huge. If you had set the Easter bunny on the floor, the thing would have reached my knee at least, and although it was hollow, the chocolate was thick. Too thick to easily break off with your hand.
This was our first Easter in Washington, so it was just myself, my daughter, and my mom in the apartment; my sister and her daughter were still living in Kansas and her son was not yet born. It was a good thing that my sister was not around, because she is a tad bit squeamish.
You see, this Easter bunny was too big to break off pieces by hand, and the chocolate was really good, so my daughter was always wanting a piece. Nor was I smart about breaking the pieces off; I used a steak knife to kinda pry off pieces of this bunny. Not my most genius moments.
One evening, after dinner, I was prying off a hunk of chocolate for my daughter when the knife slipped. I didn't even feel pain for a minute, and I stared at the knife sticking out of my hand in shock. The knife had gone in at an angle, and it had gone in til only half of the blade could be seen. If the knife had gone in straight, it would have gone clean through the palm of my hand and out the other side, but instead, the knife buried into my palm and went down towards my wrist.
I stared at this thing in shock, and then I grabbed the handle and yanked the knife out. Immediately a stream of blood followed. Now, this blood did not just flow out: the blood shot out. Like water might burst out of a busted pipe or a punctured hose. It sprayed up into the air in a thick, red arch, and spattered everything with gore. There was also this hissing noise that I will never forget, a kind of "scwhhhhhhhhhhh" sound that accompanied the escape of the blood from my body. Really, it looked and sounded like a bad special effect in a movie, except it was real.
I ran to the kitchen to grab something to put on the cut, and my daughter watched all this with big, freak-out eyes. I held the towel on for a minute, to see if applied pressure would stop the bleeding, but when I lifted the towel, blood sprayed out and got all over the kitchen. Both the dining room and the kitchen were covered in blood; the apartment looked like a crime scene.
"Go get Grandma," I ordered my daughter, and she ran upstairs to get her. Grandma had been asleep, but after seeing the disaster in the kitchen and dining room, she had me in the car and on the way to the ER in no time.
I walked into that ER looking like I don't even know what. My shirt was covered in blood; the towel that I had pressed against my hand was red, and it had been white. The security guard took on look at me as I staggered into the ER and had said "Oh my Lord, what happened to you?"
Well, I was never one to spare myself from humiliation, so he got the "I cut myself with a steak knife trying to cut up a chocolate Easter bunny" story, and he LAUGHED. And laughed, and laughed, while the nurse took the towel and threw it away and wrapped my hand in what seemed like 20 lbs of white gauze bandage.
I didn't wait long in the waiting room, apparently the knife had slipped into the artery in my wrist, and it seems that they put you on the fast track for punctured arteries. Mom (grandma) and my daughter had left me there with a cell phone to call when I needed to come home, and they had gone back to the apartment and mom was cleaning up the blood soaked areas.
I got called back to the waiting room quickly, and the bandage was carefully removed, but the bleeding had actually stopped. "Sometimes arteries will repair themselves if they have enough time," the doctor told me and then got to work numbing up my hand.
Because the knife I had stuck into my hand was serrated, there was a lot of tissue damage, and she had the tweezers out and was trying to piece the skin back together. Of course, I watched all this, and years later, I can get an awesome reaction from my sister when I talk about the doctor putting me back together with tweezers. (I also get a good freak-out when I try to replicate the way the blood sounded as it sprayed out of the palm of my hand.)
It only took three stitches to close up that little cut, and honestly, if I had known that the bleeding would have stopped on it's own, I probably wouldn't have gone. I hate going to the doctor's, much less the ER.
I really pissed my mom off two days later. The stitches were itching so badly that I got some scissors and took them out myself. Still have a small scar on my palm from that one, and my daughter does not trust me with a knife. Every time I get a tiny knick, or make any 'ow; noise, she'll say in a menacing tone "You better not have cut yourself, Momma." Kids. Cut yourself one time, and they never let you forget.
One Easter, my mother brought home this giant Easter bunny that she got from Seattle's Best Chocolate, and I mean, this thing was huge. If you had set the Easter bunny on the floor, the thing would have reached my knee at least, and although it was hollow, the chocolate was thick. Too thick to easily break off with your hand.
This was our first Easter in Washington, so it was just myself, my daughter, and my mom in the apartment; my sister and her daughter were still living in Kansas and her son was not yet born. It was a good thing that my sister was not around, because she is a tad bit squeamish.
You see, this Easter bunny was too big to break off pieces by hand, and the chocolate was really good, so my daughter was always wanting a piece. Nor was I smart about breaking the pieces off; I used a steak knife to kinda pry off pieces of this bunny. Not my most genius moments.
One evening, after dinner, I was prying off a hunk of chocolate for my daughter when the knife slipped. I didn't even feel pain for a minute, and I stared at the knife sticking out of my hand in shock. The knife had gone in at an angle, and it had gone in til only half of the blade could be seen. If the knife had gone in straight, it would have gone clean through the palm of my hand and out the other side, but instead, the knife buried into my palm and went down towards my wrist.
I stared at this thing in shock, and then I grabbed the handle and yanked the knife out. Immediately a stream of blood followed. Now, this blood did not just flow out: the blood shot out. Like water might burst out of a busted pipe or a punctured hose. It sprayed up into the air in a thick, red arch, and spattered everything with gore. There was also this hissing noise that I will never forget, a kind of "scwhhhhhhhhhhh" sound that accompanied the escape of the blood from my body. Really, it looked and sounded like a bad special effect in a movie, except it was real.
I ran to the kitchen to grab something to put on the cut, and my daughter watched all this with big, freak-out eyes. I held the towel on for a minute, to see if applied pressure would stop the bleeding, but when I lifted the towel, blood sprayed out and got all over the kitchen. Both the dining room and the kitchen were covered in blood; the apartment looked like a crime scene.
"Go get Grandma," I ordered my daughter, and she ran upstairs to get her. Grandma had been asleep, but after seeing the disaster in the kitchen and dining room, she had me in the car and on the way to the ER in no time.
I walked into that ER looking like I don't even know what. My shirt was covered in blood; the towel that I had pressed against my hand was red, and it had been white. The security guard took on look at me as I staggered into the ER and had said "Oh my Lord, what happened to you?"
Well, I was never one to spare myself from humiliation, so he got the "I cut myself with a steak knife trying to cut up a chocolate Easter bunny" story, and he LAUGHED. And laughed, and laughed, while the nurse took the towel and threw it away and wrapped my hand in what seemed like 20 lbs of white gauze bandage.
I didn't wait long in the waiting room, apparently the knife had slipped into the artery in my wrist, and it seems that they put you on the fast track for punctured arteries. Mom (grandma) and my daughter had left me there with a cell phone to call when I needed to come home, and they had gone back to the apartment and mom was cleaning up the blood soaked areas.
I got called back to the waiting room quickly, and the bandage was carefully removed, but the bleeding had actually stopped. "Sometimes arteries will repair themselves if they have enough time," the doctor told me and then got to work numbing up my hand.
Because the knife I had stuck into my hand was serrated, there was a lot of tissue damage, and she had the tweezers out and was trying to piece the skin back together. Of course, I watched all this, and years later, I can get an awesome reaction from my sister when I talk about the doctor putting me back together with tweezers. (I also get a good freak-out when I try to replicate the way the blood sounded as it sprayed out of the palm of my hand.)
 |
| Knives + Me = Bad News |
I really pissed my mom off two days later. The stitches were itching so badly that I got some scissors and took them out myself. Still have a small scar on my palm from that one, and my daughter does not trust me with a knife. Every time I get a tiny knick, or make any 'ow; noise, she'll say in a menacing tone "You better not have cut yourself, Momma." Kids. Cut yourself one time, and they never let you forget.
Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your weblog and wished to say that I have truly enjoyed surfing around your blog posts.
ReplyDeleteAfter all I'll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again very soon!
Review my weblog - http://youulike.com