A Little Protein in my Salad

So. It's Tuesday morning. In an effort to not be wasteful or 400lbs I'm dutifully working my way through the mounds of lettuce that the CSA forces upon me by making a salad for lunch (seriously, I hear there are food shortages in other parts of the world, this is likely due to the mass lettuce hording done by the hippies in my neighborhood.). Brianna cannot live by lettuce alone and since I'm nearing the end of the veggie supply I'm forced to scrounge through the fridge for fixins'. On to the island of lettuce go some grape tomatoes and some tuna fish and some canned beets when out of the crisper should pop one spring onion. Let me rewind to last Thursday as I chopped some other veggie and thought to myself, "my oh my these knives are dull. I should sharpen them." And so I did. I think you see where this is going. The onion is poised on the cutting board preparing to be bisected, dissected and consumed but this onion has bite, this onion has teeth, this onion is the little veggie that could and he's ready to stand up and fight for root vegetable rights. The cut through the onion was swift and clean right up until it hit my finger. Then it was bloody.

BEWARE: GRAPHIC IMAGES BELOW.


I AM NOT KIDDING.


AVERT YE EYES OH WEAK OF STOMACH MASSES!

As you can see things did not look good for Mr. Left Index. As I stared at the waterfall of blood that poured into my sink as I bravely submitted to washing the wound I thought about slapping on a couple of band aides and ignoring the throbbing. I thought about how if I were in the same house as my mother her ER nurse skills could probably magically sterri strip the flaps of skin together for the tiny price of listening to her lecture me on knife skills. And then I called Amy and asked her to drive me to the hospital. I felt a bit bad getting her out of bed (Oh to be a teacher on summer break *sigh*) since I probably could have called a Taxi or walked (you know, assuming I knew where the nearest hospital was which.... I did not) but then I remembered that due to her little bout with cancer Amy owes me a debt of roughly 400 hours of hospital time -- this 8am trip to Mt Sinai is no where near pay back.

My last trip to an ER for stitches took place in 1993 when I got kicked in the mouth by a wild lamb who was none to keen on putting on some shoe polish and showing off her shapely legs in the country fair. The hoof I took to the mouth resulted in me actually hiding from my parents in an effort to avoid the trip to the emergency room and thus reduce the likelihood that I'd end up with a needle shoved into my lips 5 or 6 times (though really my mother would not have blinked at the idea of stitching her wimpy daughter up in our kitchen so placing all of the risk in the hospital was incredibly short sighted). I was eventually herded into the family car, given a long lecture called "Do you want to have a huge scar on your pretty pretty face cause I can give you one with my fist young lady." numbed up and subjected to some fancy facial embroidery. I am proud to say that I was much braver this time around.

The only time when I considered jumping from the gurney and running far away from the nice Physician's Assistant and the man in the bed next to me with the truly gruesome puss-filled tale of stepping on glass a few weeks ago only to be alarmed by the oozing 14 days later was when, after my finger was numbed up with 5 or 6 shots of anesthetic, I thought "hmm my hand feels weird, is that just the numbing? Perhaps I should turn my head and actually look at the hand..." only to be greeted with a scene from SAW IX: Decapitation Isn't Just For Heads. There was so much blood. It was running down the table, it was puddling between my fingers, it was like a side of finger french fries with extra ketchup. But I again averted my eyes and managed to get through the stitchery and the tetanus shot ("Was the knife clean?" "Well, I assume it had some onion juice on it.").

I left my hospital ID on all day in an effort to court sympathy at work, this was mostly in vain. And so I am forced to court sympathy on the internet.