Remember that one time in Encounter At Farpoint when Counselor Troi wailed out, "Pain! Pain!"
Remember when Mr. Spock was all, "Pain! Pain!" which was totally not Vulcan-like?
Remember when [Lost spoiler redacted]?
Remember that time your company had a Christmas party, and instead of a band, they got an Agony Booth?
Yeah, that’s me right now. Yesterday, I was smashing some trash down in the trashcan beneath the sink, and I learned that a dogfood can lid on its side is an incredibly efective cutting tool, especially against the top of my thumb, just across the knuckle.
If you ever want to see what the inside of your thumb looks like, or you want to bleed twenty-three gallons of blood all over your house on your way from the kitchen to the bathroom (because, having seen the inside of your thumb, you’re kind of in shock and don’t stop to think, "Hey, there’s a sink right here, dummy, don’t go all the way across the house to the bathroom!") or you’d just like to watch your normal typing rate drop by 90%, this is a great way to do that.
Oh, and as an added bonus? You get to wake up about every 90 minutes all night long, because your thumb is throbbing, itching, or both. And if you play your cards right, you’ll get to have a tetanus shot, too.
Yeah. Goodtimes. Good. Times.
Hopefully, I’ll be back to normal by Thursday, but until then, probably not so much new spiffy stuff here or elsewhere, because typing is a real bitch right now.
Afterthought: a bunch of people have asked why I didn’t have the deadly lid and the can in the recycling, where it belongs. That’s a good question; unfortunately, the answer is: I just didn’t walk the lid out there, and the can was being used to hold bacon grease (gross.) If it makes a difference, I’ve had PTSD every time I’ve gone anywhere near the sink in the last 24 hours. And I’m on my way to the hospital to get a tetanus shot tonight, instead of waiting for my regular doctor tomorrow afternoon.
11 PM – Aaaaannnnd I’m back. I went to urgent care at 8, because "that would be faster than the ER," logic which apparently comes from the run-across-the-house-while-bleeding portion of the brains.
Okay, it actually was a lot faster than the ER, and I had no business being in the ER with my gaping and life-threatening little wussy cut anyway . . . but let’s be honest with each other: didn’t "that would be faster than the ER," logic which apparently comes from
the run-across-the-house-while-bleeding portion of the brains make you giggle a little bit? I’m glad, because nothing makes a joke funnier than pointing it out, and going on and on about it.
The attending was impressed with my butterfly sutures and my splinting, didn’t laugh at my totally awesome pirate bandage, and gave me a tetanus booster before sending me on my way with no need for making-Wil-faint stitches. I was going to ask for a "be nice to be cuz I’ve been shot" sticker, with the teddy bear and the hearts and bows, but I figured that being able to take a rusty nail without fear until I’m forty-three years-old was good enough.
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I once did this to my thumb with a plastic spork…yep, a spork cut me so deep I still have a fairly macho looking scar. When I did it I must have stared in dumb shock for several minutes trying to understand that the spork somehow really did slice me open and leave me gushing. I think my roommate walked in and found me watching my thumb drain itself on the kitchen floor with the sink 2 feet away — and even more mystifying…why did we have plastic sporks in our kitchen, and why was I eating with one?
Good way to sleep without your finger falling off from the pain? Elevate it. It can be as simple as lying on your back with your hand resting on your chest. It’ll still hurt like a mofo, but not wake-up-from-the-pain hurt.
Well, Wil, I would feel sorry for you, but I’m too busy being annoyed at the Lost spoiler. SOME OF US ARE STUCK IN THE UK AND STILL ON SEASON ONE, DUDE!
*shakes head* And after your plea for no spoilers the other day… I thought I was safe!
😉
Feel better soon!
I don’t remember Counselor Troi’s “Pain, Pain” line, but I DO remember the 9,357 times she said “He’s hiding something.”
Seriously…that sucks. I did the same thing back in my fast food days…only I was cleaning a knife and promptly sliced the bottom of my thumb. Nearly lobbed it clean off! I still don’t have any feeling in that thumb to this day, and it was over 10 years ago.
Ack!
As if my own personal memories of extreme pain and injury weren’t enough, there are about 53 others to read here… I jumped to the end after about 5. I’m glad we’re all still alive to talk about it. No Darwin Award winners here (yet).
Get well soon, Wil.
See, now, I opted for the “slice off your finger rather than slice off a piece of onion” route, myself, last night.
And, when I say “slice off your finger” I mean “slice into your finger.” I still have all ten fingers (and toes).
Perhaps we bloggers go for hand issues rather than leg issues (Locke) due to the nature of our online work–typing.
Locke being one with gifted legs and all of that. Hmmm…*grin*
So, wussy cut or not, these things hurt like Hades.
Feeling the kitchen accident pain right along with you…and hoping the shot wasn’t too horrid!
ctofine
Oh God yes I cant believe I made that mistake! Jim Henson (‘The Muppets’) died of staph infection. You can
die of this stuff and this is the ‘super-form’ kind of like a new strain.
Cutting-edge staph.
LOL I was watching Star Wars and Yoda’s fight is just so awesome,…
Anyway it is WONDERFUL Wil got this attended to, as well as the tetnus shot which should last him about ten years or so!
wil wheaton fark photoshop spotted.
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=1996221
Oowww!! I hope it heals quickly.
For the pain, use Tea Tree Oil. It’s a natural pain killer and anaseptic (spelling bad i know). A neighbor of mine used it (I applied it for her) after her dog bit her and she was able to walk on it. Might help. Can’t hurt.
Cans..evil.
There are some people who voluntarily do what you did simply for the rush..
I guess you’re not one of them!
If all else fails, just suck on it.
“…I figured that being able to take a rusty nail without fear until I’m forty-three years-old was good enough.”
Dude, you should still fear rusty nails. Cause they hurt, no matter how many tetanus shots you’ve had.
Oy! My mom once sliced her finger in a nasty way with a razor-sharp can lid (bound for the recycling bin), and this reminded me of that. Both made me cringe. Eek!
All I heard from this post is that you guys are caught up on episodes of “Lost”. Sorry to hear about your boo-boo.
Ugh. Thanks, Wil. Now MY thumb hurts.
Reminds me of when I cut my fingertip with a meat slicer when I worked for a deli during college. All I remember is my latex glove finger filling with blood, and having to tell a customer to “hold on a minute, I’m bleeding all over your braunschweiger.”
Good times…
Aww, poor you. Finger-cuts do hurt like a bitch, though. And why do they have to bleed so much, anyway? ‘S like head-wounds – all this fuss over nothing, over this pain over nothing. Ah, well. Made for a good story.
Hope you feel better soon. (And I never read the Lost spoiler, so you spared at least one person at least. Though I had probably already seen the episode, so…yeah, gonna stop trying to make you feel better now. =P)
Ouch.
Reminds me of the day in september some years ago when the husbandy guy cut his finger doing something around the house. We rushed him to the ER because it looked like it might have nicked a tendon and as a prof. musician, he didn’t want to chance losing use of the hand. He walked in with his hand wrapped in wash rag, and lo and behold there were a dozen or so other guys there, hands wrapped in towels, etc., all weekend warriors who cut themselves on honeydo projects…
Keep it washed and dry, Wil… and don’t push your hand in the wastebasket…
mojo to ya.
Libby:
I did that too! Except I wasn’t working at the deli, just in the grocery store. I wanted to make myself a sammich and somebody had shown me how to use the slicer. I used my index finger (same one as with the razor blade incident later dammit!) as a guide on the meat (not in the demonstration!) and sliced the corner off.
I stood there for a good solid 2 seconds just staring down at it before it started bleeding and I was like…holy buckets! I gotta go! Owner’s wife was working the office and decidedly unhappy 😛
Wil Wheaton is Still on the Cutting Edge
Jeez, you didn’t have to take the compliment literally!
WIL – Dude I am so sorry about earlier.. Stupid me didn’t check your blog.
Hope you feel better soon.. I know what pain is.. being cut open from a C-section, and once as a kid having your entire thumbnail ripped off and blood just spurting everywhere , and then falling off the monkey bars flat on your face onto a bunch of sharp jagged rocks as they get all embedded in your face with more blood spurting everywhere. I FEEL YA DOG!
BE SAFE!
I have a sticker on my bulletin board that says I’m my eye Dr.’s star patient. I’ve had it for years. If I recall correctly, the way I got it was by seeing it and saying “OOOOH! Can I have one of THOSE!!!” 🙂 -I think I was in my late 20s at the time.
Did you use your left hand or right hand for that? lol. Sorry – I just had to say that. I did not read all of the comments before I started to make mine, so if somebody else already beat me to the chase and quoted ‘Stand By Me’, I apologize.
Hopefully you don’t get some wacky infection from that cut. In high school, I got a really bizarre infection in one of my legs. It swelled (is that correct grammar? idk) and I was on crutches for a month. The doctors thought that I had a cut on my leg that got infected and caused my leg to go haywire. But no! No scrape, no scratch, no nothing! Still to this day, nobody knows what infection I had and how it got there! Whatever it was, I only wish it on my worst enemy. It was a bad month.
Not long after it started, I found myself in the emergency room and a surgeon (brace yourself) had to drain my leg. Right before the procedure, the nurse said, “Oh! You need a tetanus shot! I’ll get that for you!” And right after the surgeon was done working with my leg, the nurse gave me my tetanus shot.
Good grief. I was never in so much pain in one day in my whole life.
Get better! I hope I didn’t freak you or anybody else out with my story.
Cut to the Quick: When Domestic Accidents Happen
Wil Wheaton tells how he cut his thumb the other night on the lid of a tin can. (Warning, his narration will make your hands hurt)His unfortunate domestic accident reminds me of the Chicken Skewer Incident. I volunteered to make…
Owowowowowowow!!!
Y’know, I’ve worked in restaurants for many years, and I even once peirced my hand with a Chef’s knife (trying to pry apart to frozen burgers, the manager wrote stupidity as the cause for the accident, and I felt it was only right to sign it as such.) Few things compare to the pain of the lid from a can. They are sharp, but jagged, and even more jagged than you at first realize because there are all these little frayed bits along it.
Hope it heels up quick.
TTFN;
Tina
Owie!
I got one of those “Safety Can” can openers not too long after they came out, and that’s how I avoid such horrible fates. They stop working so well after awhile, though. The one I’m using now isn’t that brand, but it’s the same principle.
If you ask Andrew (your editor, who was kind enough to take me to a football game in October when he had extra tickets) to bug me about it, I’ll buy one, get it to Andrew, and he knows how to get stuff to you, right?
Oh, and my own last tetanus shot was from trying to clean the METAL drain-strainer for the kitchen sink by hand. I tossed that one once I got back from the doc’s office and have only used plastic ones since. (Those will go through the dishwasher on the top rack OK, so I just rinse the worst of the crap off and do that when it really needs cleaning.)
Hey Wil – sorry to hear about your injury, but … hmmm .. that description is just begging for a picture! Can you post one? One with the pirate band-aid and one without 😉 Hurry … before it heals too much and we think you are a real wuss for such a tiny-already-healed-no-scar injury 😉
What a coincidence. I badly cut my index finger, in a similar but much stupider and more avoidable way.
A grease fire started under my stove burner, and I didn’t have a fire extinguisher. But my apartment complex has one downstairs. Behind a glass door, which was locked. But there was a shard missing, so in my panic I figured I could pull off the rest in one sheet. I couldn’t; another shard came off and it went through my fingertip like melted butter. So I ran upstairs without the extinguisher, to wash it off. It’s a good thing the fire went out on its own, or I’d have had two emergencies to deal with.
I didn’t even sleep on it; I actually called 911. The paramedics came, managed to remove the paper towel from my finger without pulling off that square inch of skin that was hanging on by a thread, and told me I’d need stitches. I then called a cab and went to an urgent care facility, where I got five stitches.
It’s eight days later, and I still essentially have to type with nine fingers. That square inch of skin is dead, and I have no idea how long it’ll take for that to heal.
I’m a bit self-conscious about my Frankenfinger, but that won’t last. For my uncle is visiting, and the fingers on one of his hands never grew in at all. That’ll make it difficult to complain.
Add me to the “cut by tin cans” club. I was carrying a bag of garbage and a tin can top came through and sliced my leg open to the bone. I will never forget actually seeing what my tibia looks like… After seeing that, I immediately went into shock, so I don’t remember feeling any real pain. I still have a nasty scar to remember it by, though…
Wow – just seen the picture. You earn some sympathy points with that!
Ouch!
Ouch — just got around to reading this post.
Been there, done that, and it ain’t fun.
And can lids are just as dangerous in the recycling bin as in the trash.
Geez, we put a man on the moon and we still can’t make a safer can lid