Posted By FarmerJ on May 14, 2011

After my streak of bad luck last Thursday,  I thought I was out of the woods with a fresh new start the next morning.  I was, too…for about an hour and a half.  Then, all blood broke loose.

I was cleaning out the refrigerator, consolidating items that I could still identify, and wanted to put some Saran Wrap over the bowl of pasta salad.  That shouldn’t be too dangerous, right?  Wrong.  The Saran Wrap was stronger than I was ~ I’d only had a couple cups of coffee at that point ~ and it was being really stubborn in tearing off the roll.  Somehow, when it finally gave way, my thumb holding the opposite end of the wrap met up with the blade on the box.  Yeeeeeow!

I was now sporting a nice slash all the way across the top of my thumb just below my cuticle.  That’s one way to get rid of hang nails, I guess.  I knew my thumb would bleed quite a lot because of the way a thumb has it’s own little pulse mechanism in it, so I took a napkin and applied pressure.  That seemed to work, until I took the pressure off.  Then, it made the prettiest red geysers you ever did see.  I graduated to a paper towel with hopes that something ‘more absorbent’ would do the trick.  It absorbed, alright.  It absorbed as much blood as my little thumb was pumping out until it could absorb no more.  I then advanced to a large bandage.  I figured the outer plastic lining would at least keep the blood in check, you know?  And, if I wrapped a piece of tape tightly around it, I would be applying pressure, too.  That theory lasted about a minute.  Indeed, my thumb was scoffing at me.

So, I finally did what any military wife would do.  I called my soldier to receive instruction on how to stop bleeding ~ thinking soldiers have been trained on how to deal with these types of issues in the field, right?  My Darling Husbie, who was just in the middle of telling the story of our yesterday and how his wife now carried a tool she could break out of jail or pick locks with in her tooth, saw a familiar phone number on his Caller ID.  He hesitantly answered the phone, “Hi, Honey??” as in, ‘What’s wrong now, Honey?’

I asked him how I could stop bleeding.  He said, “Apply pressure to it.  What did you do?”  I told him about my egregious wound and he asked how deep it had gone.  I told him I was pretty sure it just stopped at the bone, as there really isn’t a lot of meat on the top of your thumb, you know?  Then he asked, “Do I just need to put a helmet on you and send you to bed?”  Only after wrapping me in bubble wrap, I thought.

So, I started thinking about that white powdery stuff doctors use to stop bleeding [I still can't think of the name of it], and knowing that part of the ingredients contained sulfur.  I knew we didn’t have any of that, but I thought about what else we had around the Farmstead that contained sulfur.  Matches.  Matches contain sulfur.  It was worth a try, especially since Brawny was getting tired of holding up his end of the bargain.  Not to mention, I only had a couple left on the roll.

I took a match [Army issued, by the way, from an MRE (so, see, soldiers really are equipped to handle these types of situations)] and placed the head of it on the corner of the cut.  It burned a little bit, but ‘not as bad as if I’d lit the match first’, I thought and chuckled to myself.  After about a minute, I lifted the match.  Much to my surprise, that portion of the cut was no longer actively purging blood from my body.  So, I took another match and did the same thing on the next section of the cut.  Same result.  Sweet!  It took four or five matches to do the trick, but it worked.  Until I tested it by giving my flesh a little tug to see if it would ‘hold.’  It didn’t.  But, it only took a couple more matches to fix it up again.

I had a lot of work to do around the ol’ Farmstead, especially since I’d been gone so long the day before, and I couldn’t be babying this thing all day.  I needed something to hold it together.  Usually, when we need something held together with resilience, we turn to duct tape.  However, in this instance, I didn’t think that would be such a wise choice.  So, I grabbed the Super Glue bottle.  A little bead of glue all the way across the cut sealed it right up.  Viola!  No more worrying about how I was going to do dishes, or brushing it up against something tearing it open again, or dirt from gardening and weed pulling getting in there.  Nope.  I was good to go.

A week later, my egregious wound is almost completely healed.  No infection, no soreness, no scab.  Just a faint reminder of a nice, clean cut.

Well, at least it took my mind off of my tooth with the file still stuck in it for a little while, yes?

And, I’m happy to report I’ve been mishap free for four days now.  Well, if you don’t count me grabbing the pan that had just come out of the oven with my bare hand last night.

Stay careful out there!  ♥

We’re linking up with Farmgirl and Farm Friend Friday again this week ~ be sure to venture over there to catch up!

Categories: Plainly Ponderings
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