The Worst Day Ever, Part 2

So later that day, I sliced my finger open on a jagged piece of metal. Normally, I wouldn't have worried about it. But it was bleeding a lot. At one point, I thought I had stopped it, and then looked down to see my entire hand literally dripping with blood.

After about half an hour of this, I decided to call the nurse hotline. The nurse told me how to stop the bleeding, and said that I shouldn't worry about the cut, aside from getting a tetanus shot. After debating back and forth whether this was worth a trip to the emergency room, or whether I was just being paranoid, I decided that it would be a good idea to have a tetanus shot anyway, so I might as well walk down to the hospital, which is a block away from my house.

When they finally gave me a room, a guy who was probably younger than me came in to scrub my wound with a surgical sponge. After scrubbing for a while, he said "Whoops!" and dropped the sponge on the floor. Then he picked it up, and was about to scrub some more, before realizing what it was he was doing. Then he said, "Well, I don't think we're gonna get it much cleaner than that," and walked away.

A little later, another guy came in and told me to lie down. I was starting to get the feeling that this was a BIG LEBOWSKI moment. I got the impression that this doctor was a good man. And thorough. And it freaked me out. But I laid down, and he looked at my finger, and said I needed a "steri-strip" and a tetanus shot. Then he asked me when I had to go back to work. I told him Monday. He thought about it, and said "You'll be fine by then," and walked away.

At this point, I started freaking out a little bit. What the frack is a steri-strip, and why would it keep me out of work for two days?

I found out while later when someone else came in to apply it. Apparently, it's just a piece of tape which is designed to hold the wound closed. But because of the size and location of the cut, the technician couldn't figure out how to put it on. She finally put a little piece on, and said, "Keep it clean and dry, and it'll fall off on its own." It ended up falling off before I was able to get out the door.

So then she said, "Okay. You're done." "What about the tetanus shot?" I asked. That's the whole reason I went in there. I didn't need to wait an hour and a half to get a piece of tape put on my finger. She checked back with the doctor, and he said she might as well give me the shot. So she did, and then I left.

And this is why I try to avoid going to see doctors. Usually, they tell me to drink more water. In this case, they put a piece of tape on my finger. Was that really worth the time and effort? Um... no.