TO DEAL WITH GORE DELICATELY

Last night I googled, "How to know if I need stitches." The Wikihow link at the top of the list assured me there were only five steps to knowing if stitches were necessary. "Steps" seemed like an organized, simple process of elimination. "Steps" are reassuring.

Step one: With cloth or damp paper towel apply pressure to wound. If still bleeding profusely after five minutes, go to the hospital and get stitches.

Oh.

Isn't five minutes a little premature? Anyway, after twenty minutes I had stopped bleeding profusely and now several hours later my finger wasn't really bleeding anymore, of course it was going to bleed just a little when I bumped the side of my index finger into something. 

I read the rest of the steps and three out of five agreed with me, no hospital trips necessary, so majority rules. Right? It couldn't be a quarter of an inch deep, wouldn't that be half the width of my finger? And I hadn't seen any bone...

You see, I'd just wanted some fresh baguette. I'd picked up the baguettes yesterday afternoon, it's one of my favorite parts of living in France: going to my local bakery, struggling to explain myself, and walking home with warm delicious baguettes cradled in my arms. When I got home from the bakery yesterday, I was hungry. A bit of baguette and cheese sounded like a great snack. I was happily cutting the bread when the serrated knife slipped––

There are several rolls of paper towel out for use around the kitchen. This was convenient as my finger was starting to drip bright red drops. In fact, drip might be the wrong word as all the drops were connected into a little stream. It wouldn't do to fixate on that though, I pressed the neatly folded paper towel square onto the cut and thought about what my next step should be. Should I tell Marie and ask her what she thinks we should do? No, I should wash the knife, other people may want bread. 

I have an aversion to receiving attention about wounds. To have someone try to take care of me, see if I'm OK, or to tell me I'm OK and it's no big deal: that all sounds horrid. I would rather keep busy, move on. I stopped short of drying the knife. My next idea was to hold my finger above my heart, that should slow the bleeding down. I grabbed a few peanut m&ms with my other hand and decided that if I was still bleeding in twenty minutes...no half an hour...or maybe 45 minutes just to be sure– I would show Marie. I wondered if it was bad to wait 24 hours before deciding if stitches were necessary.

My finger looked horrible this morning but like the skin could mend itself back together barring its being ripped apart again. If you want to know what it looked like, I took a picture. I'm not yet sure if I'm being foolhardy, I sometimes don't know how to take care of myself, especially considering my high tolerance for pain. I wouldn't have considered stitches but I don't think I've ever cut myself this badly or bled so freely. I'm not really aware of how to take care of myself all the time, which is largely the purpose of this blog and half of my conversations with my sister: to learn how to be a functioning human. But really, it feels better to be scarred and to have toughed it out. Now I just have to force myself to wear bandaids for a very long time. I hate bandaids. Do you think I can find superhero ones in France?



Ironically, I bought a shirt in London last week with the image of a finger spurting blood.