I was so looking forwards to last night.  The kids were both in bed and asleep by 7:30, I’d made a delicious supper (pork stuffed with bruschetta and feta, steamed broccoli and carrots, and honey/balsamic cherry tomatoes with pine nuts), and we had a DVR full of awesome shows to watch.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to knit or finally put some photos into the kids’ albums, but I knew I was going to park myself on the couch with Yannick and just veg.

And then I decided I wanted some fresh coconut.  I took the same paring knife I’ve been using for years to separate the meat from the shell, and after Yannick smashed it open for me, I started emptying the shell.  I’ve done it for years, same knife, same technique.  Last night…I dunno, I must have gotten distracted.  All of a sudden I realize I’d cut myself.  I was standing over the sink, so I opened the water, dropped the nut and the knife and went to rinse out the cut.

That’s when I realized it was over an inch long, over a centimeter deep, pumping out blood with every beat of my heart and showing some whiteish-yellow thick stuff inside the gaping hole.  And THAT’S when I yelled for Yannick to come help me.

It was the first time I’ve ever had to call 911 for a medical emergency, although my mom came over to watch the boys so we were able to cancel the ambulance and Yannick took me to the hospital instead.

You know it’s serious when you’re in and out of the hospital in 2.5 hours including ER wait time and treatment!

Tara’s husband has the FrankenFinger, I’ve got the FrankenThumbPad.  Luckily it’s my left hand and I’m a righty, but it’s still bad.  In the fleshy pad under my thumb, palm side.  Apparently the only reason the knife didn’t come straight out the back of my hand was because it hit the bone.  All this time at the gym- guess I don’t know my own strength!

I’ve got stitches in for 2 weeks then I have to go back and they’ll evaluate if I’ll need physio.  In the meantime I have to change the dressing every day and keep moving it, but it hurts like hell.  By using only my right thumb for the spacebar I can still type but everything else hurts.  If I do anything even slightly moving my left thumb I feel like the fresh wound is being torn open.  What sucks most is that I can’t do my workouts for a while.  I’d already just missed a week (story coming later) and now I have to miss a few more days.  Ugh.

To complicate matters further, they didn’t offer me any pain killers at the hospital, and I didn’t think of asking for any (I think I was slightly in shock).  Within 20 minutes of getting home the anesthetic they’d injected to do the stitches had worn off and it was just a raw wound.  I could feel every stitch, every gash, every millimeter of the cut.  The Tylenol I’d taken had done nothing for the pain, and the only thing stronger in the house was some leftover Demerol from when Yannick threw out his back last time.

I’m still nursing Henri, and I didn’t want to take anything without checking with InfoSante to make sure there were no risks.  So at 2 am when I couldn’t sleep because the pain was excruciating, Yannick called 811 and asked about the Demerol risks.  The nurse said that I couldn’t nurse for 24 hrs after taking the pills.  Yannick and I had a long talk about it, and we decided I’d take the pills.

I’d been planning on weaning Henri next week on the 8th, when he turned 9 months old.  1 week early makes no difference, and when Yannick agreed to help me out by taking the Henri duties for the next few days (since I can’t lift him easily right now anyways) I decided it would just be easier all around to wean him now.  Easier for Henri because it would be someone else giving him the bottles, so he won’t smell the milk on me.  Easier for me because I’ll have Yannick to help instead of doing it alone like I’d been planning.  Also easier for me becuase now I can take the Demerol for the pain.  It sucks that I didn’t know last night was my last nursing, so I didn’t enjoy every last second of it, enjoy him cuddled in my arms and knowing I was feeding my boy.  But I think it will work out for the best this way.

So if yesterday’s lesson was “don’t knit with the wrong size needle” then today’s lesson is “don’t use a sharp paring knife to get the meat out of a coconut”.  While they say bad luck happens in threes, please forgive me if I say I hope I have NO lesson to give you tomorrow!