My HUGE Story

Well I promised you a story.  I went on a quilt retreat a few months ago to the mountains.   The same friend whose parents shared their mountain home with us, have a beach retreat in Coronado!  Well it is a condo, but for us ... A beach retreat!  Only a 20 min drive ... We planned a short 3 day trip.

This was what we walked into ... Wow!  Right on the beach .... Let the relaxing begin!

This was our view ... The Hotel Del was right next to us ... We got to see the SEAL Team trainees training in the ocean every morning.  I thought they looked tired swimming, but upon closer inspection through a monocular, they were only swimming with one arm!  Wow ... That's all I can say.

It was day 2 and I was sewing along on my Metro Hoops quilt.

I was talking, squaring up a block, going too fast and not paying great attention ... I was also using a dull rotary blade.

Can you imagine what is coming next?  I was cutting up and over and whack .... Ran into something hard that went flying .... Oh dear, I sure hope that was a chunk of fabric that flew across the table.  But alas it was not, it was a chunk of my finger!  I dropped the rotary, grabbed my hand and quickly applied pressure.  I would like to say that my quick thinking came from watching Shark Week over the weekend ... All I could think was apply pressure to stop the bleeding!  My three friends were kind of doing like a comedy act ... No one had seen what happened, but they did see my finger on the table!  I should say it was a big chunk

of finger and nail, not my entire finger!  While one friend grabbed me a paper towel, the other one tried to find the number to the front desk to find out the closest Urgent Care, and my third friend grabbed the finger off the table, stifled the urge to throw up, and put the finger on ice in a paper bowl.  They couldn't find a ziploc bag!

My friend quickly changed her clothes and grabbed the bowl and we were off to the Coronado Emergency Room.  They were so nice and got me in super fast ..,,

Until they started poking around.  I had to release my vise like grip three different times so they could see the wound.  Then the doctor poked around ... Owww ... Then I started freaking out.  No offer of anything for the pain, and I went into my Shirley MacLaine impression in Terms of Endearment when she was trying to get pain medicine for her dying daughter.  

I had my friend in stitches.  The doc said the piece was too small to sew back on and the area too large to stitch.  They put a piece of foam bandage over it and it would soak into the cut and stop the bleeding.  It hurt like heck as they applied it ... The nurse trying to get the bleeding to stop, and the assistant holding my finger to try and still the flow.  Finally it worked ... I got a tetanus shot

And I was out of there within an hour.  WARNING:  Graphic picture to follow:

This is the bandage I went home with and a splint over to protect it.  I will spare you from the picture of the chunk of finger.  The doc said the area will take about a month to heal, that it will grow back and to change the dressing 3 times a day.  I was horrified the first time I changed it and had to see the thing, but it wasn't as bad as I thought, so all was good.  

I quickly learned how to quilt with a bum finger

The proper way to cut with your fingers as far away from hanging over the edge as possible!  What I learned:  like using a knife, NEVER use a dull blade ... You have to press harder to make a cut; slow down ... No prizes for going fast, and pay attention!  This quilt will forever be engraved in my memory banks ... Every time I look at it I will remember it as THE quilt I lost part of my finger to!