Part One is here, part 2 here…
So there I was, home alone, stranded, unable to drive anywhere due to my finger but desperately needing medical help to change my bandages. I ran a few options over in my head. I could stay in my new pool of blood until someone came home in 8 hours? Was phoning triple 0 too much? Ultimately, I had no choice but to do it myself. My biggest fear was unraveling the massive ball of bandages to find my finger had come off all together, like a really macabre pass the parcel.
So I sat myself in the bathtub, no water and started the slow painful process of slowly removing the blood soaked dressing . The pain I felt while taking them off, the bandages pulling off the freshly burned skin, was unlike anything I’ve felt before… I blacked out briefly twice and threw up once, that was how much it hurt… I kept expecting to see a hint of bone protruding from the mess that used to be my hand.
I got to the end and had revealed a still attached, bone on the inside “finger” of blood and blackened flesh. It was a sight. And a relief. I cleaned it up as best I could & re-bandaged it. I took a handful of painkillers and went for a nap on the lounge. Out of fear of waking up to a bloody lounge I put my hand in a plastic shopping bag just before I passed out.
When I awoke a few hours later I thought i best try clean my blood drenched sheets. I put them on a wash, had a few more of my painkillers, grabbed my plastic bag and had another medically induced nap.
I’m lucky I don’t live in Ramsey street because the Neighbours would have been all a flutter had they seen me hanging my blood splattered sheets out like some sort of serial killers flag. Harold would had a heart attack.
This was going to be the final chapter in the Middle Finger Saga (if Twilight is a saga so is this) but I will finish it up next week with an Epilogue of life as a 9 and a half fingered person.
