Before any of you who may have happened to see the below photo before reading this, don’t jump to conclusions. I’m just writing this on behalf of a very good friend of Diane’s who wishes to remain nameless. That’s the truth. Here’s what happened.

While working on the window sills that Diane has been waiting for since sometime in 2018, this individual once again discovered that the least little bit of inattention or, possibly, the complete disregard for simple safety measures, creates a situation that generally ends badly for the person involved. In this case I reiterate, it wasn’t me. Honest.

I know, I have a history of injuring myself in sometimes dramatic ways that generally require a trip to either Urgent Care, or an Emergency Room, whichever is closest. And, my injuries are usually caused by some sort of sharp tool, like a saw or box knife. There’s been a hammer injury, or two, too but those are minor. In the case of Diane’s friend the offending piece of equipment that caused the injury in this case was, oddly enough, my table saw.

I know, right? Figure the odds that someone besides me found a way to create considerable amount of excitement leading to a trip to Urgent Care using my table saw.

My history with that saw involves two events where I managed to cut a 1/8″ kerf across the fingerprint pad of my left forefinger and my left thumb. These were two separate event that happened years apart. I may have mentioned them in previous posts. They healed nicely, in case you’re wondering.

Diane’s friend changed things up a bit by using the same blade to rip the fingernail off his left forefinger and causing a compound fracture of that last bone of that finger when thew blade hit the bone. As a result of extracting his finger from the saw’s jaws, instead of a neat kerf like I made, he turned the end of his finger into a mess that looked suspiciously like a dollop of raspberry jam. Quite colorful and, according to Diane’s friend, extremely painful until he went into shock and his body shut off the nerves to his left hand.

I’m not making this up! I was there and saw the whole thing! He was dancing around holding his finger, make horrible “pain” faces one minute, then he stopped when the pain stopped. He continued to hold his injured finger, thankfully, to keep from dripping blood all over the place as it was leaking badly.

At Urgent Care, I was allowed to go in with Diane’s friend and was able to get a fresh photo ofd the injury. It was kinda creepy, I must say.

After a few days I, rather Diane’s friend, was sent to a Recon doctor to see what should be done. That confused me a bit because in my world, “Recon” is short for reconnaissance and has nothing to do with doctors unless the person doing the reconnaissance gets shot. Turns out the medical version of Recon means reconstructive, as in plastic surgeon which in itself does not make a lot of sense to me because it doesn’t make sense to me. But, that’s where we were sent.

At the recon doctor’s office, the bandage was removed and the PA in charged diligently removed the gel blood soaker thing from the end of Diane’s friend’s finger. It was like an artificial scab.

Thankfully, before doing all that they gave him multiple shots of lidocaine around the base of the injured finger making it severely numb.

Then a yellow gauzy thing was applied to the injury so it could be wrapped.

Then we all went home as there was nothing else they could do. So, basically, the trip to the recon doctor was kind of a waste of time because I could have wrapped the wounded digit sufficiently with just three bandaids. I know that’s true because I did just that during one of the re-wraps prescribed.

I know you know I’ve been fabricating a bit, and the wounded digit is my very own. This is what it looks like now, after a week or so of healing.

As a result of my injury I’ve been banned by Diane and more than one doctor from using power tools, once again. I’ll never get those window sills done at this rate.