Wild Wild Week - The Pinky

I'm not going to gross anyone out with any gory details of what happened next in our Wild Wild Week but let me start off by saying I'm not a fan of knives. Never have been terribly comfortable with using very large knives, so I generally use a much smaller knife than is required for the job.

Saturday evening we were planning our own mini-Thanksgiving dinner. We'd just finished cooking the turkey and it was on the stove cooling. The sweet potatoes were baking in the oven and I was sauteing onions, carrots, and celery in broth on the stovetop. I had a box of Stove Top stuffing but Danny had thought we could add some extra veggies and dried bread to the mix to round it out a little more.

Cutting dried bread proved to be a bad idea for me and resulted in an accident that caused me to pass out on the kitchen floor (with Danny climbing over me to clean the blood off the tile before the kids ran inside), with us driving to the Emergency Room (both kids in tow because neither of the grandparents answered their phones), 2.5 hours in the ER, and culminated with me getting 6 stitches in the top of my left pinky finger (did I evertell you that I'm left handed?!).

I've mentioned before that my husband is a no-nonsense sort-of guy. Very "keep it simple". I've talked to him before about how lousy he is in comforting when someone gets hurt. The kids might stub their toe and he'll grab it roughly and rub it, slap them playfully on the backside and tell them to "walk it off". It's not that I don't think he doesn't care but maybe he's just uncomfortable seeing people in pain, or maybe he just doesn't know how to act in a comforting way, I really don't know?

In any case, the entire time my finger was bleeding, he held my hand over the sink rinsing it off and saying, "It's okay honey, it's not that bad, you're okay!" He was trying to stay positive and was his usual calm self. When I came to on the kitchen floor, he leaned over me and said, "Honey, I think we'd better go to the emergency room". That's when I knew...it was bad. If he thought it was something that couldn't be fixed by "rubbing a little mud into it", then it was pretty bad, indeed. I could see it in his face...worry.

Monday night we changed he changed the gauze, applied ointment gently and carefully wrapped and rewrapped the bandage until it was just right. It was a different side of him, one that was able to show how gentle and comforting he could be.

You know, you don't really realize how much you use your pinky finger! Taking heavy pans out of the oven is impossible. Writing and typing have been a challenge, I've had to shift and compensate with my other fingers. Of course the entire hand is achy from holding that one finger straight inside the bulky bandage.

Pinky fingers, they're not just for lifting when you sip out of a teacup, I guess...