Monday, May 10 2010

Safety First: On Being All Thumbs

Behold, the most dangerous thing in my house:

Note the infinitely sharp point front-left. That's the one.

Folks who follow me on Facebook (Tim Vandergrift) and Twitter (@WinexpertTim) will have seen some posts about emergency rooms and doctors over the last couple of days. I'm here to tell you that when it comes to cellaring, safety first.

Last week a shelf came loose in my wine cooler. It's an upright model that sits in my pantry and keeps my reds cool and my whites chilled. It's kind of small (less than 200 bottles) but it's useful in a condo. As the shelf came loose and cascaded down I tried to grab a Champagne bottle before it hit the floor. I missed, it hit and it popped back up. As it did, it stabbed me right in the thumb, palm side, between the second and third knuckle.

It hurt like mad and sprayed blood everywhere (seemingly the story of my life) but it wasn't a very large cut, just deep. So I bandaged it, cleaned up the crime scene and cursed the loss of perfectly good Champagne, while the thumb ached and irked me. It continued to hurt all week, but I didn't want to be a baby about it, and did quite a lot of writing (blogs, instructions, scripts, presentations, the usual) and ate Ibuprofen like peanuts.

But the deadline for getting our garden came, and I put in a solid week of weeding, distributing compost and manure, turning the soil with a garden fork and digging up the paths and spreading new bark mulch--all heavy hand labour. Sunday I finally got around to pressure washing my patio and the third time I gassed up and started the engine there was a terrible *SNAP* inside my thumb that shot down my forearm and brought me to a whimper. My thumb was frozen, like a carrot taped awkwardly to my hand.

Off to emergency. Anyone who has ever pressure-washed with a high-powered machine is wincing right now, because you get filthy from backspray and soaked to the skin. I was a little dishevelled, I must say. But praise be the power of socialised medicine! I was admitted two minutes after I arrived, in triage five minutes later, x-rayed within 20 minutes after that, and talking to a doctor in less than an hour. He apologised for taking so long, but he was the only guy on! After a quick exam he shook his head: "That needs surgery right away"

Our doctors here are on work-to-rule, meaning no overtime. Dr. Clark said he'd call some friends to see what he could do. Glory be, ten minutes later I had an appointment Monday morning with an eminent hand surgeon. Now tell me that Canada's system doesn't work, hah!

This morning I got in to the clinic at 7:55, and at 8:10 I had my assessment: it's not actually very good. I had partially severed the tendon that makes my thumb bend in the first incident, and now I had ruptured it completely. I'm scheduled for re-attachment surgery this Friday at Royal Columbian Hospital. The surgeon was equivocal about the outcome. 'Partial function' he said, and no more powerlifting. Well, I'll be happy if I can use it to tie my shoes and hold a pickle jar, frankly, but he's not even the fifth surgeon to tell me I'd have to give up powerlifting.

Man, what a life-line!

I'll leave the gory details out, because they're actually quite gory. If you look at the blue line on Mr. Hand, that's the path they'll take to open up my hand and re-attach the tendon, which is apparently hiding right down in my wrist at this point. Although this is common, standard surgery it will take a lot of rehab and a lot of time in a cast, and probably a lot of painkillers. Ouch.

There are a few side-effects and considerations as well: I have to shoot a couple of videos in the coming weeks, and I'll be doing it in a cast. I'll just have to explain it as a fashion statement, maybe. Hah. Also, it's the beginning of summer! I'm going to have one pale arm when the cast comes off in six weeks!

But let this be a lesson to us all: the floor is there to keep the glassware, be it a bottle, a carboy or just a glass, from going into the basement. Getting between razor-sharp glass and gravity is a very bad idea that can carry a high price: jump out of the way, and keep your parts to drink another day.

Posted by Timothy Tendons AT 6:01PM 1 Comment Comments Post A Comment Post A Comment Email Email

Send this post to a friend