25% Crucifixion (or) A Left Handed Christmas

a while back i posted about words you can type with one hand… i believe it was decided to call them qwerds.

here are some left handed qwerds:

erase start red great fart greet qwerd aware

i only bring it up because this afternoon as i was thinking how nice it was to have an afternoon with nothing to do, i dropped a glass. as it fell i grabbed for it, and the glass, my hand, and the counter all collided at an unfortunate time. a huge gush of blood and a pile of gauze later, i was in the emergency room with a huge deep cut going from where the thumb and index finger meet across the palm to the side of the thumb.

and when i say deep, i mean deep. the triage nurse, er nurse and doctor were all light-hearted banter until they actually looked at the cut… and the mood changed to quiet awe. “wow… that’s a really deep cut,” they each said.

“i like to be thorough,” i replied each time.

the doctor was very concerned until he could verify i had not sliced a tendon. apparently the angle of the cut was just right to avoid it.

after four hours and a very uncomfortable procedure involving 12 stitches, the nurse was cleaning me up and giving me instructions not to use the hand until the followup on monday (ordinarily, they would just have me back to cut the stitches out in 10-12 days, but as they kept telling me, it is a very deep cut).

Nurse: so what do you do for a living?
me: i am an engineer.
nurse: oh. well, not this week you aren’t.

so, i’m learning to do things left-handed. did you know that it is possible to lather and rinse your left armpit with your left hand in a pinch? also, i did not know that handedness applied to brushing your teeth.

there are many other side stories to this which slow typing prevents me from chronicling, but one tidbit was my doctor used to be a computer programmer but got out of it because he was being pushed into management. i’m not sure quite what to make of that. i’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader1.

i guess those leaves are going to stay in my gutter for another week. i’m all broken up about it.

1 also a qwerd.