Slicing My Right Thumb

From Temp

Well it wasn't intentional. Two days before when I got a little sloshy from one too many drinks, along with dropping my camera on its lens inside my eggplant stew, I dropped one of Polliwog's ceramic mugs on its side and broke the handle off. No big deal except we decided to keep it. The next day while washing dishes, I began to vigorously scrub the outside of said mug which lead to a very deep laceration of my right thumb- thankfully only the proximal part of the digit. A very shallow laceration could be faintly seen continuing frighteningly close to the palm.
What a disaster that would have been!
(By the way, the blur in the photo is actually the oily delicious residue of Persian Eggplant stew. The photos had to make the sacrifice..And now it is clear that their sacrifice is ours as well- I feel so united).

After successfully controlling the bleeding and Polliwoggy nearly passing out, we put on our jackets and shoes to pick up some medical supplies. First we checked Kiwi, a small grocery store on the dormatory property. A young clerk told us that not only did they not have any medical supplies but that every store in town with supplies would be closed. It was 1830 hours at that point. As Polliwog began a determined mission to find bandaids and iodide (to my request) I tried to convince her that I could get by with something that was sterile...such as a piece from a feminine sanitary napkin. She definitely was not having any of that. It would have worked, but she was not convinced yet about the stores being closed.

We jumped on the metro headed for what she called Down Town Oslo. After a 15 minute ride, we exit our train and I follow her through the maze of hallways. Soon we emerged into what was an enormous shopping mall. It trips me out when the subways lead into these large shopping centers. This happened elsewhere in Europe and I always felt like I was still in the subterranean portion of the metro. We take two stories up and find a medical supply shop not only very open but also very busy!

Bandaids were easy and so was 10 meters of bandage cloth tape. The shop didn't have regular gauze, which we both thought very strange. After double checking with the clerk, I selected the box of bandaids for 35Kroner. I picked up a 10mL vial of Iodine solution for sterilizing the water to wash up the finger. There was a bit of language confusion with the lady who helped us earlier. For 73Kroner (approx. $10 USD) I wanted to be sure this was in fact a vile of iodine. A nice Chinese exchange student at the register answered our query to our confidence and we spent a total of 148Kroner (around $21 USD).




Once back to the dorm room, I went into the bathroom and filled a ziplock baggy with water. After putting some drops of iodine in the bag and shaking well, I cut a minuscule piece from the tip of one of the corners and used the bag as syringe to force clean the wound.
Being very fresh it opened up nicely and the blood began to flow. I entertained this for nearly the entire wash, but decided to spray a little faster since the blood was free flowing. The excitement now over, we went on to the more exciting things of watching her favorite TV shows via internet. The time used to deal with this essentially canceled our planned night out. We had hoped to go to the Opera Bar, where people apparently go to drink beer while listening to er...opera?? We'll try again on Tuesday. I gotta see this, I thought.

It was an incredibly silly injury. The laceration is sooooo deep, I am sure I could see the bone. I'll just have to keep it clean and keep it bound. Finger wounds as deep as this take a long while to heal.