Amateur hour!

November 5, 2008   

There is a good story to go with my black eye! It will make you laugh I am sure.

So I was putting up a shed over at my old place with my worker Francisco. The base was propped against the fence as he levelled the ground for the shed. Well it ended up on his head and caused a very large laceration that was deep. If you are squimmish stop reading here!!

So as with all head injuries there was a lot of blood. I got some rags and had him hold it on his head and sit down until the bleeding had stopped. Then I called my friend the paramedic who wasn’t answering. There was no way Francisco was going to the hospital… being without paperwork. If it was me I would have been there in a NY minute. So as I waited for my friend to call back I finished the shed and kept an eye on Francisco checking for concussion etc. I took him to my house and pulled out the medical kit for on the boat which includes a suture kit which I am not qualified to use but it also has all the materials to clean the wound.

I was doing a good job washed his head under the shower, hair by hair had to be remove from the wound and then used an iodine swab to clean it really well. At this point there was no blood I was just trying really hard not to hurt him. Francisco was being very brave. I am poking at his head with surgical gloves and a pair of tweezers. All of a sudden I didn’t feel good so I stopped poking his head and lent against the sink for a few seconds. Well after that it is a blank!!

I woke up to Francisco yelling my name and shaking me and pain on the right side of my face. Well I was out apparently for only 30 seconds or so. I had passed out and hit my head on the wall on the way down. Poor Francisco was beside himself and very scared. So I got up and took a breather on the couch and went back to working on his head as I had to close the wound.

I ended up using dermabond it seems to have worked really well. After 30 seconds of holding the edges of the 3 inch laceration together it seemed to have kicked off. Poor Francisco is definantly going to have a big scar as I didn’t do that great of a job of knitting the two sides together. I took him home with some Advil and have been checking it out for the last few days. Speaking no spanish and him very limited English meant I had to resort to an online translation tool to ask him about pain etc. There were many moments where he stared blankly at me not understanding what I was trying to say it probably didn’t help with him huge headache!You can only imagine the story he had to tell about the crazy gringo women he works for when he got home! At least my black eye will heal and there won’t be a scar. So now I am on a mission to get over my new weakness and learn how to use sutures as that is really what needed to happen. I think this however, will take a lifetime as I can’t even recieve injections never mind give them.

 

One Response to “Amateur hour!”

  1. Surely sutres are the same as repairing a sail, no? I’m pretty sure the last doctor who stitched me back together was using light UV bonded thread and a sailmakers palm!