This is what is called...BETTER!

June 15th, almost 4 weeks ago. After playgroup, I headed over to my in-laws to spend the afternoon letting the kids play with their cousin, Jacob who was down for the week. My in-laws had somewhere to be, so they left around 6 or so. Adam came over after work around 6:30. The kids had been playing outside in the water and so we started them on baths. The girls had their bath first. A friend of Adam's came by to borrow some keys. He would bring them back in about an hour or so. Alora got dressed and Aralyn got just her diaper. The kids were hungry, so I decided to start some dinner. Adam and I were talking over his day and I wasn't paying much attention. Adam's parents had some ham in a plastic baggie, that I decided would be good in slices for the kids. I didn't want to get out a cutting board, since I just needed a few pieces. I was cutting sideways with a pretty sharp knife and it slipped. I told Adam that I had cut my finger. He didn't see how bad it was, and told me, "Just rinse it off." I told him, after looking at it, "I can't. There is skin hanging off." We rushed around looking for a clean towel to wrap around it and trying to get my purse and the kids to take to the ER.

The boys just grabbed shoes and a shirt to put on with their wet trunks and Aralyn was dressed, but Alora's shoes weren't found, so they were left behind. We called Adam's parents to let them know what had happened, and not to come rushing back until we knew more. We also called Adam's friend to let him know where we had gone. We had left the house unlocked, there was food on the floor and large drops of blood from the kitchen, down the hall to the bathroom and a bloody knife somewhere in the kitchen. We didn't want him to worry when he showed back up to return the keys to Adam.

It was a bit crazy, with Adam getting the 4 kids unloaded and me being taken back to triage. I was thinking that I would mostly be by myself, but about 30 minutes in, Adam came back with me cause his friend came to watch the kids for us.

the doctor told me that I had cut some veins and an artery and nicked the tendon. It I had cut the tendon, then I would be looking at surgery. As it was, we could just clean it and stitch it up. They shot me up with lidocaine and while it was numbing, the nurse cleaned it up. That part made me feel really cold. I was freezing! Once I was numb they started trying to stop the bleeding.

The small handheld cauterizer wasn't working. Blood was spurting onto the wall. They got a bigger cauterizing machine from the OR and grounded me to it with a gel pad on my leg and he worked with it for a while. About an hour and a half in, he asked for the on call surgeon to be called in. He thought that the artery needed to be tied off, since he didn't seem to be making any headway with getting the bleeding to stop. About the time that the surgeon showed up, he was finally able to get the bleeding to stop. The surgeon was able to look at it and see and he okayed for the doctor to go ahead and stitch it up.

The stitching took the least amount of time. I had four stitches that would dissolve underneath to hold the fascia down, and then 13 on the top. We were there for almost 3 hours. It was a long long night. The kids ate junk food out of the vending machine and Alora gave Adam's friend an anatomy lesson about the difference between boys and girls. It had him and the receptionist laughing...since he doesn't have any kids he doesn't know the fine art of distraction!

I went to the ER four days in a row for them to check and re-check my finger, since it was bleeding more than they liked. I went back to have my stitches taken out and they thought that I might need to have some skin that hadn't survived cut off, so I was sent to the surgeon.

The surgeon said it didn't look like it would be necessary to take off the skin that wasn't surviving. He thought it would heal pretty well on it's own. He saw me again a few days later to check on it and he said he thought it looked great. He re-iterated the same thing that the doctor had said, which was, that it looked lots better than they thought it would look. Apparently because of the depth of the cut and the shape and all, they didn't think that the skin would survive at all, or at least just a small portion of it. Almost all the skin has survived, so that it good. I had several people praying for my recovery, and it has been great. I prayed a lot while in the ER, and God said yes to my prayers. He is a wonderful God.

I get to take the splint off soon and go back to see the surgeon for him to see if he would recommend me seeing an occupational therapist. I hope that that isn't necessary. No insurance and something like this, makes for a bit of financial strain. Not fun!