#2 - Why won't my boyfriend let me use sharp knives?

For the short version, read the highlighted sections.

The answer is, I stabbed myself.

BY ACCIDENT, may I add!

As you have probably already guessed from my previous blog, I am one of the most indecisive people you will ever have the pleasure of reading about. This indecisiveness links very romantically with my other inherent skill: a lack of coordination. This means I am a essentially a walking tornado who can't make up her mind.

Now that's been established, I should probably explain how and why I ended up stabbing myself (BY ACCIDENT!!!)...

It was just over a week ago when I called my boyfriend, Anthony, from work asking if he could get us some tea ready for when I got home, to which he replied "Of course, absolutely! Anytime my sun and stars!!!" (which sounded more like "yeah, if you want" in real life... *rolls eyes*). On completion of my shift I got home at around 6 o'clock to him starting a recipe for chicken souvlaki, halloumi for the vegetarian (me), and being told to sit down with my puzzles and get a glass of wine (SCORE). But after about ten minutes of this bliss, I felt like I wasn't contributing and decided to get some tidying up done while he cooked. When the sink was empty and the dishwasher loaded, I saw a leftover mango pip on the side of the sink that I'd been saving to try and grow.

Now this is a good moment to mention that this seed hoarding is not a new phenomenon for me... I love trying to grow veggies/fruit/plants either from seeds, leftovers, or propagations so that I can eventually learn to be completely self-sufficient. I'm a nutter for the environment and made the decision to become vegetarian based on the knowledge that the average human diet is slowly but surely killing our climate through the sheer amount of meat that we eat on a day-to-day basis (more on this in a different blog). So trying to grow fruit and vegetables from scratch to fuel my diet is one of my many hobbies.

Back to the pip.

I decided that after a glass of wine it was a great time to try and grow a mango seed. So took out a paring knife and proceeded to hold the pip in my left hand where I tried to pry it open using the small knife. As you can imagine, that was a stupid idea, as I applied so much pressure to the pip that the knife slipped and continued to stab me directly in my left palm... I immediately began to panic, pulling the short blade out and holding my palm with my other hand, jumping up and down saying to Anthony "Oooo, it's bad! It's bad! It's baaaad!"

He asks to see it and says that it's just a scratch and that I need some steri-strips on it, not fully realising that it's a puncture wound. I ask Anth to quickly go round to my parents house to get my Dad, who would know what to do as he's had 23 years of me and my siblings injuring ourselves. During this moment of solitude, I found myself shocked that something that hurt and throbbed the way it did was barely bleeding at all and when Anthony returned sans Father, I started to panic even more because I knew something wasn't right, despite his caring reassurances.

I finally got through to my younger brother and my Dad came round almost immediately. I took off the bandages that Anth had carefully applied and my Dad responded instantly with, "Yup, that a stitches situation!". I started to cry heavily at this point because I knew that I would be spending at least 4-6 hours in the local A&E department with an empty belly and no one to accompany me (most hospitals in the UK still won't allow more than one adult per incident due to internal COVID restrictions). So off we went in the car, me blubbering the entire journey.

Inside A&E, I waited pretty patiently for the first hour, then the second hour came around and I became increasingly more antsy and nervous. My agitation combined with my bad pain-tolerance meant I began openly sobbing in the A&E waiting room, becoming more and more of a mess with each name that was called that wasn't my own.

Eventually my name rang out across the room, and the nurse practitioner ushered me into one of the small consultation rooms for an assessment. Once the wound was revealed, she said, AND I QUOTE, "Jeeez, I'm surprised the knife didn't go all the way through!" To which I promptly began to cry and ask whether she could fix it that night so I could go home for my tea (classic me thinking with my tummy not my brain).

Now if you're squeamish then I suggest you quickly scroll past the following picture to the next paragraph... (TW)

The nurse was unsure how deep the cut in my palm was, and due to the intense pain and aching in my fingers and thumb, she suspected that I might have done some damage to the tendons in my hand. This is because the tendons on the inside of the palm are all very surface level and can be damaged even by the smallest of cuts. So I wasn't allowed to go straight home, first I had to go for a set of X-rays to check the bones, then the wound needed cleaning and redressing at a different hospital a few miles away, as that was where the specialists were.

After I had been shuffled about from place to place, still hadn't had anything to eat, and once the nurse at the Plastics/Hand Therapy unit redressed my wound, she said that I could go home but to listen out for a call from the hospital in the morning. This call was in regards to having the wound investigated by surgeons in theatre to check there was no serious damage to my hand. So I went home at around midnight, still filled with adrenaline from my time running around various hospital wards and was greeted by Anthony who had kindly waited up and had food ready for me.

In the morning, we were kindly woken by a super early but lovely call from one of the doctors at the big hospital to let me know I was scheduled for that morning at 10am. I was told to fast (no food or drink) and to wear something comfortable. So naturally I put on a pair of Mom Jeans and a cropped, sleeveless turtle neck jumper, because how else do you look comfortable yet presentable?

When arriving at the hospital, I had a short wait in the waiting room, and was told pretty promptly to go into one of the consultation rooms so that I could be seen by one of the nurses, Georgina, who would walk me through the pre-surgery procedures. I was told that I had to take all of my piercings out and to tie my hair up away from my neck. Now, as someone who has twelve piercings in their ears, two in their nose, and one ...elsewhere... I knew full well it would take me 10 minutes to remove them all with the use of both my hands, but one-handed... I could've been there a long time. The nurse gave me a hand tying my hair up into a bun, and I spent an easy 20 minutes removing the piercings I could from my ears and nose, followed by poor Georgina having to fondle a breast to remove the other. Once the hard job was done, she then attached an ID wristband to my right arm and helped me into my gown, where Georgina had the pleasure of viewing me in all my comfy-knickered glory. The stockings were also a joy to put on; everyone loves wearing knee-high racing green stockings with holes in the bottom on a Monday morning (as pictured above).

I then had to wait through what was probably the longest hour and a half of my life, sitting in the consultation room in pain and a rather uncomfortable gown waiting for someone to take me to theatre. Bare in mind that at this moment in time, I thought I would have to go back to work on Wednesday after my two days off, meaning I was wasting valuable time in the hospital after a stupid accident that I could be spending elsewhere. After I stewed over my terrible life decisions, and had two unfruitful visits from an aesthetician and a surgeon, I was finally collected by a lovely nurse named Jill.

Jill, if you somehow come across this blog and are reading this now, you must know that you are an angel and the job you did was imperative, otherwise there would've been about twelve surgeons trying to pin me down while in active theatre.

Jill escorted me to a ward where the surgery was going to take place, talking about everything from Joe Wicks to the Mirena coil to keep me distracted, then continued to hold my hand through every step of the procedure. When it came to being administered the anaesthetic, I was very uneasy and had made everyone aware of how panicky I was, but Jill was right there beside me to distract me from the three injections going in around my wrist and the two in my armpit. They had already inserted a canula into the back of my right hand, through which they gave me a drug that would make me feel a "little drunk", and looking back I'm glad they did that first because the local anaesthetic hurt like a b***h.

While chatting distractedly, Jill and I turned our conversation towards accents, where I explained that with my previous job as an English tutor, I'd often slip into received pronunciation (RP) to be better understood by students, despite naturally having a rather strong Yorkshire accent. She replied saying when she first started working on wards, she had to be very careful with what she said to certain people, as her Yorkshire accent would often mean the word 'couldn't' would come out sounding like 'c**t', and at that I let out a deafening cackle. The various medical staff in the room looked at each other with smiles on their faces as the aesthetician said, "She's there!". I was then wheeled into the clean white room on the gurney, and all was done and stitched up in under a matter of 20 minutes. They found that I had a deep laceration to my left palm but nothing serious in terms of permanent damage to the tendons, just two weeks of recovery and three stitches

Jill wheeled me back down to the consultation room and I said my most heartfelt (and slightly delusional) thanks to Jill for all her support and was left with a different nurse I had not yet met to help me get changed back into my clothes. I managed to get the jeans on without much fuss, but my arm was so anaesthetised that it was like carrying a useless swinging d**k around that kept getting in the way of things. The new nurse gave me an easy T-shirt gown to wear so that I did not have to struggle trying to get my useless arm into the sleeveless turtle neck I'd brought.

Once dressed, I called my Dad to let him know that I had finished at the hospital and they were setting me free, but all I could think about was food. After thanking everyone I could on the Plastics/Hand Therapy ward, I made a beeline for WHSmith's to grab myself a meal deal (and a sneaky bar of Salted Caramel Tony's Chocoloney that we will not tell Anth about) while I waited for my Dad, all of which was stored in my handy new sling.

I'm on my second week of recovery now and my hand feels much better. Still some aches and pains every now and again when I push myself too far, catch the stitches, or stretch at a funny angle, but overall it's healed nicely. I have to go back to my local hospital to get the stitches taken out, but I'll always have a nice zig-zag shaped scar on my hand to remember this grand old experience by (my new nickname should be Mango Potter). In conclusion, I won't be using knives anytime soon.

All my love till next time, Moll xx