For my wife's birthday on Sunday I was cooking her favourite meal (Jamie Oliver's North African Lamb dish). Chopping up the parsley I slipped with the knife and chopped off the top corner of my finger.
It's just flesh, so it'll grow back. And it wasn't really that painful - the worst part has been the nausea of thinking about it. So I figured I'd let everyone ELSE think about it too :-)
Typing is very hard though. It's my index finger, and it's very heavily bandaged, and bandages and a laptop keyboard don't go too well together.
slicing flesh
slanning on 2004-05-24T14:30:09
I'm that way, too - thinking about it's the worst part. When I was little, I was playing basketball barefoot at my aunt's, and I felt like I had gum sticking to the ball of my foot. I left it there for a while, but eventually looked at it, and apparently I'd sliced the skin on a rock and a flap of skin was hanging there. After that, I started to become nauseous, even though it wasn't bleeding or anything, just from the thought of it.
Hand Injuries, Paranoia
chaoticset on 2004-05-25T14:22:23
I did something obscenely stupid several years ago and ended up with a cut that went across my left index, ring, and pinky fingertips. I was ripped and horrified simultaneously --
that's one of my typing hands! I refused stitches -- I couldn't imagine the scarring that would result from that -- and bandaged them as tightly as possible. My index finger's scar is obvious, and points to the faint scar on my ring finger, which points to the extremely faint scar on my pinky. (Just as you'd expect, the depth decreased with time because I was recoiling from hurting myself.) The cuts couldn't have been too deep, though. I think that if they had been to the bone I'd have had infections or problems nervewise. As it is, my fingers feel normal, and the only things that really changed as a result were my fingerprints.
Every time I start thinking about how I could hurt my fingers accidentally now, I get very, very cautious, to the point that I have to stop thinking about it in order to function properly.
Take care with those keystrokes
dug on 2004-05-25T21:04:09
It might be worth taking a couple of days off until you can type normally if you find yourself adjusting your hands to keep your index finger extended in an akward way. I've had a (less bad) similar cut, and it was a pretty quick recipe for sore wrists/hands for me.
Sorry to butt my head in, but I could have used a similar reminder in the past (and given my thick-headed nature, will probably need one in the future {grin}).
-- Douglas Hunter
Old injuries no obstacle
WebDragon on 2004-05-26T01:04:35
Whilst working at a part-time warehouse job out in CA while going to school for guitar at Musician's Institute, I sustained an injury to my thumb. Without going into the gory details, basically I'm missing half the first joint on my right hand thumb, which thoroughly changed my hand position for fingerstyle guitar.
The doc managed to save the cuticle and my nail grew back, sorta ok. well enough for picking anyway. But that's not the point. There's actually two points.
First off, one of my buds from out at the school, Tim Gearan (who is such a monster blues player I could always tell it was him warming up on stage for a playing workshop while I was all the way out in the cafeteria. I'd go look to confirm my suspicions and sure enough there was Tim.) came to talk to me after my injury. He showed me his right hand, whereupon I noticed for the first time that he was missing the entire first joint on his thumb. We grinned at each other as I uttered a soft "well, goddamn." and at that point I determined that it wasn't going to be an obstacle for me.
Second point, at that point, I picked up an old Telecaster bass with a baseball-bat for a neck, and determined to learn to play slap-funk bass, figuring that I couldn't feel anything on the side of my thumb anyway. SO I proceeded to blister my fingers for about three months until I could.
In the years since then I've picked up a rather unusual fingerstyle play since I can't *quite* pluck as fast as I used to. Got lots of pretty stuff written in an altered tuning or two, and eventually I'll get around to slapping them on a disc and offering them for sale.
...and all this was years after having sliced the tip off my LEFT hand ring finger (the one that goes on the fretboard) while working in a restaurant, while cutting tomatoes with a french knife (no it wasn't in the slicing machine, I got bumped from behind).
Don't let it get you down. You adapt. You overcome. Yeah, yeah, be more careful, sure. Just don't let it _stop_ you.
:-)
