So I'm now confident enough with typing to write this. I started writing on my palmpilot last night, but it took me ages to write 8 lines of palmpilot text so I stopped. Here is what I typed then. I'll follow it with what I type now.
23/0/01 8:11 pm - I am officially a cripple now. I have a big hole in my right hand. Between the index and middle knuckles. How did it get there? I'll tell you about my afternoon:
Jake and Phil and Luci came to my apartment to show me Phil's beautiful new Keilworth
...that's all my mangled hand managed to produce yesterday, but I'm going pretty well now, typing with 1 1/2 hands, so I'll continue...
Keilworth sax. SX90 Tenor. Beautiful instrument. Fantastic case too.
So Jake did some hair colouring for me as I had a little Feria left. He did a fantastic job (he used to be a hairdresser, so it's not like I expected bodginess) and we had much happiness and hair-colouring fun. Although Phil was whingeing as he had decided that it was too easy to simply hang around, and he wanted to go and play pool.
Soooooooo, after dicking Phil around for as long as possible we gave in. Jake went off to work, Phil and Luci went back to their place to get Phil's cue and I went to have a shower and a shave. Turns out that the roof in my new bathroom is a little lower than the last one. So as I was taking off my beloved Chauvel-hair-colouring-shirt I managed to put my hand through the glass bathroom lightshade. Crunching noise. Lightshade falls to the floor and splinters into a billion fragments. I pull my hand back down and looked. It wasn't bleeding and there was a moment of "did I just hurt myself" uncertainty before I flexed my fingers and the blood started flowing happily from 2 gashes.
Grab teatowel (clean). Apply pressure to wound. Phonecall for assistance - "Hey Phil, it's James. There's been a slight change of plan. We're going to the hospital."
"There are easier ways to get out of playing pool James. We'll be there in a sec."
Go out onto balcony, sit on chair and remove teatowel to inspect wound. Cut on middle knuckle not too deep, oozing a bit. Cut between middle and index knuckles pretty bloody, sop up blood with teatowel (not so clean now) and gently pull sides of skin to assess extent of damage...
...
gaze
down
between
edges
of
gaping
slashinto
living
tissue
check
othersideofhand
didn't go allthewaythroughs
i
t
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o
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Teatowel goes back onto hand. Feel blood drain from face. Entire body exudes cold sweat. Move to edge of balcony to facilitate regurgitation. Fortunately I havn't yet had breakfast so there is nothing to regurgitate.
Sit back down. "Cool, I'm in shock. Havn't been clinically 'in shock' for a while"
Phil and Luci return. Much funny joking and comic banter about not playing pool. Both turn a funny colour after having a little peek inside my body. "How did I do it? Have a look inside the bathroom"
So we go for a little walk to the car, a little drive to the Royal Brisbane Hospital emergency section where I am signed in, packaged, digitized, queued, sent to the "trauma waiting room" and promptly forgotten about.
The girl on Wheel of Fortune won her second car in two days.
A while later, Phil is getting restless and muttering about "muttermutterwhatthefuckinghellisgoingonmutter" while I reassure him that there's probably people who are much worse off then me, they're just not in this waiting room cause they can't stand up.
Cute Doctor/Nurse/Medic/Whatever has a little chat (sexy English accent) and sends me off to have an x-ray. Follow the blue line to x-ray and give the next Cute D/N/M/W my piece of paper. She escorts me into the lead-lined room, chatty and flirty, handling me carefully but firmly (yum). Chat and flirt right back with the full-force of my abraded person. Bring a big unselfconscious smile by telling her that she does a great x-ray and it hardly hurt at all. Ask her if I can get a printout or a screengrab for some digital art, more big smiles and batted eyelids, and an assurance that she'll do what she can.
So I follow the scuffed blue trail back to the emergency waiting room. Funny term if you think about it superficially. Back into the caring arms of my brunette DNMW who treats me as a mixture of wounded soldier and sex-slave (unfortunately quite a lot more of the former than the latter). Bit of wound cleaning, bit of x-ray looking, bit of idle chit-chat ("is that your hand on my leg?" "actually, what your doing now with the gauze is the only time that it's hurt at all really."). Had to call Mummy to enquire about my last tetanus shot and the possibility of my arm falling off if I have another.
No stitches, nor needles, nor glass shards camping out in the hand canyon (just thought of that one). Yell down the corridoor to deliver each piece of good news to Phil and Luci, who are still sitting in the waiting room like good puppies.
So I thanked DNMW nicely with a big smile and many you-are-the-most-desirable-thing-in-the-world looks. Promised to return on Monday to purchase prints of my hand, collected my charges and exited like a Ninja (possibly a Ninja/One Man Band) into the night.
So that is why I didn't get to come out for Guinness last night Rowland. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. Sorry to anyone who I have shunned through lack of email/IM too, I'm not as good at one-handed typing as you might have expected.
Hey man,
I just read your hand story and laughed till i stopped.
Will actually e-mail you now but thought i should post a comment on your thingy.
