"Only the woman is wearing complete protective gear."
An observation my wife makes while we watch the Bridge Breaking Competition. A dozen engineers mill about, loading metal weights into buckets, and measuring when the popsicle sticks and dental floss contraptions slide, blow and explode into constituent pieces to the oohs and ahs of the delighted and dismayed onlooking crowd of grade school students and families. All of the engineers wear glasses, a few sport steel toed boots, though most have sneakers, and two hard hats are in attendance.
"Oh. That's interesting." says me, and softly led the thought to the background, there being more interesting things to think about. Crack! Crash! and another broken bridge suffers catastrophic ignomy and flies into pieces to the waiting floor and bucket. "Oh wow, that one supported 72kg!"
Applause. We leave. Time passes. Life goes on.
Four hours later I'm sitting in the emergency room clutching a fileted finger and cycling through alternating turns of waiting, triage, waiting, care, and attention.
30 minutes before that I stumble into a bicycle repair shop, one hand cupped underneath the other attempting to stop the alarmingly strong and steady flow of blood from splattering to the floor.
"Do you have a first aid kit?" I ask.
A man opens the small maintenance shop bathroom and slides open the top drawer beside the sink, revealing a box of bandaids and assorted other containers of unkown function. I open the cold water faucet, thinking coolness will help slow down the blood stream. (('that's being smart' says me to me.)) Brilliant scarlet intertwines with clear water and swirls into the drain, in a constant never slowing stream. With teeth and single hand, first one bandaid (('oh good, the quality reinforced cloth ones')) and then another are wrapped around the insulted digit, ((there we go!)). And... a mere dent in staunching the flow.
A woman snakes into the small room and asks how I'm doing and if I need any help. I don't actually say yes, pride you know, but somehow we proceed to next stage anyway. She snags a first aid kit from a shelf near the floor and digs around the partially consumed kit until a spool of gauze reveals itself. There's no surgical tape, but this job at least another bandaid completes handily. The gauze steadily yields fresh snow white to dirty spring brown, but no bloody drips emerge. ((Whew.)) She asks if I can get somewhere for stitches, that being an obvoius necessity, if there are people I can ask for help, and encourages me to reach out to them.
I drive to the hospital, myself. Pride again. ((I don't want to be a bother. It would inconvience them, and really, it's not that bad. Just a flesh wound.))
...time passes, stuff happens, reflection begins...
It really is just a flesh wound. Presence of a first aid kit -- and someone who knew something about utilizing it's contents -- did not "make the difference" in saving life and limb. I would have made it to the hospital and gotten the wound properly addressed without that. It would, however, have been much messier. Blood on my clothes, blood in my truck (or someone elses), blood on the floor in the hospital.
I would have been whisked into triage immediately, true. This would not have gotten me stitches and back home any quicker though. It merely would have bumped the emergency room people intake flow, causing unecessary alarm, and delaying the assessment other people and their treatment needs. Of the 7 other patients I saw there, from toddler with possible broken foot/leg, to teenager with something invisible, to middle aged woman caressing her side, to first nation elder wheeled in on stretcher, mine was the only clear and obvious diagnosis and consequent treatment, completed onsite, finished then and there.
In 47 years this is the 5th time I've attacked this finger to the point of needing stitches (only applied twice though). What does it take for intelligence to take over? When will I learn to wield blades safely? I thought I had this in the bag after the last one! ($900 USD and a camping-fishing trip cut short for me and 3 others; happening on Day 1 of 5.) Yes I no longer sharpen hot dog sticks while walking, or make a new belt hole using a finger for back pressure, or stab beer cartons just for fun, or start a fresh saw cut using my finger as guide. None of these "no longers" saved me yesterday.
'When will I learn?' Is not a fruitful question. 'How?' is better. I'm not sure yet, but it will involve taking first aid courses again, with a different breed of attention in hand. Ahh, there it is: attention, in hands. I thought I was being metaphorical. I've got symbolism in the bag, it's literalness, physical embodiment, that could use vitalizing. Huh, Mindfulness again. Ok then.
...
I started this story invoking gender stereo types. Stereo types happen when a repeating pattern is applied to all things containing X, ignoring that X+X and X+Y are quite different. I've been living to a stereo type. the male who doesn't need help, will deal with it himself, and safety precautions are for geeks and sissies. It's time to loosen the mold I've been carrying and live to direct perception conjoined with insight into causality.
2017-Apr-09: first written.
2018-Oct-08: revised, clarified.
2023-May-17: reformatted for gist, restored photos.
Matt Wilkie
_Olfa "Hand Saver" utility knife with a fresh "used only once" blade. Maybe it really did save my hand. A dull blade or rickety handle would have had more force propelling it through the plastic, yielding a potentially deeper and definitely more ragged cut, ripping and tearing more than slicing._