As I watched the blood running off the back of my hand, my first thought was: “I really wish I hadn’t done that.”
My second thought was: “This is going to be embarrassing to explain.”
So, let’s just say for now that the blood in question was coming from a self-inflicted knife wound suffered on Saturday in a parking lot in Oklahoma City.
The knife blade was sharp and went in the back of my hand at about the same angle they use when they stick you for an IV.
The wound was only half an inch or so wide and probably three-quarters of an inch deep, but it had found a vein.
I have carried a pocket knife most of my adult life and use it often for everything from cutting cardboard and fishing line to peeling potatoes and stripping wire.
Never stabbed myself and, in fact, I often see people using knives incorrectly and think “You’re going to hurt yourself doing that.”
Within a minute or two, it became obvious this wound wasn’t going to quit bleeding on its own, so daughter Brooke drove me to the emergency room at St. Anthony in Oklahoma City.
“I cut myself with a knife,” I summarized for the lady behind the check-in plexiglass. “I thought I’d come see if I need a stitch or two.”
I answered a few more questions, then went to see an RN, who asked a few more questions.
In 10 minutes, tops, I was called back to a room where I met Mackenzie Nolan, a nurse practitioner.
She asked a few more questions, looked at the wound and thanked me for hurting myself with a knife sharp enough to leave a clean wound.
“I think we’ll be ok with one stitch right in the middle,” she said. “With one stitch, the anesthetic would take two shots, so you’d probably be better off just doing the stitch without it.”
“I’ve heard that speech before,” I said, and recounted the time in 1971 that I caught my finger in the fan belt of a ‘61 Chevy, resulting in half a dozen stitches administered without benefit of an anesthetic.
She blanched and looked so sad, I regretted telling her the story.
“I am sorry they did that to you,” she said. “We can give you the anesthetic.”
“No, that’s fine. Go ahead and stitch it and we’ll be ok.”
A few minutes later, she was back with the stitching thread and had me position my hand on the bed at the right angle.
She deftly ran the little fish hook through both sides of the wound, pulled it tight and knotted the thread a couple of times.
And just like that, we were done. It was as close to painless as a stitch can be and hurt less than the tetanus shot that went along with it.
Leaving the ER, I had two thoughts: - I wish it had been nurse practitioner Mackenzie Nolan stitching up my finger all those years ago in Wilburton.
- This might be a good time to review some of the knife-handling safety rules. You can hurt yourself with a knife, if you aren’t careful.