Friday was quite a day, I wanna tell ya.
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Remember when I was a winner? It happened again, only better. I was the one of the winners of the Friday raffle -- a $50 Visa debit card, good pretty much anywhere. Heck, if they keep treating me like this, I'll keep coming back to work. Year after year after year.
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A bit later on Friday afternoon I was talking to my husband on the phone and noticed that the back of my left hand was swollen and sore. I told him I had maybe broken a blood vessel, didn't know how. And went back to work.
Twenty minutes later I glanced at my hand and discovered that, unbeknownst to me, someone had sneaked half a ping-pong ball under my skin. Really. There was a hemispherical lump about an inch high and two inches across on the back of my hand. Guess I really had broken a blood vessel, and not a teeny tiny one.
I showed it to the woman whose office is next to my cube and she said I ought to go somewhere and have it looked at. I said I'd give it five minutes and see what happened. Thirty seconds later I could tell it was bigger -- I was getting stretch marks around the lump.
I wrapped some ice cubes in a paper towel, held than on the lump, and walked to an urgent-care-type office in the next block. By the time I got there I was starting to panic a little. My hand was getting shooting pains because the leaking blood had filled all the slack in the skin and was now starting to exert some serious pressure.
The nurse in the urgent care office asked if I had injured my hand; no, not that I was aware of. She told me that there was nothing she could do for me then -- I should just wrap an Ace bandage around it to keep the swelling down and put ice on it. Gee, thanks. But she didn't charge me or even ask for my insurance card.
Now, just in case you are ever in a position where you need an Ace bandage, like, NOW THIS INSTANT, let me advise you not to be in the downtown Minneapolis skyway. It is not something sold in every little convenience store. What are readily available, however, are pantyhose, which make a perfectly acceptable emergency substitute.
(Crummy picture courtesy of my cell phone.) The ice pack held on with a nylon stocking reminds me of a cartoon of a hung-over guy with an oversized icepack on his head.
I didn't get a picture of the Really Stupendous Lump, but here it is after being bound for about an hour. It's grotesque, so don't click unless you really, really want to see it. Showing it to people on Friday afternoon caused more than one to cover her eyes in horror.
On Saturday I got myself a real [Walgreen's] Ace bandage and kept that hand nicely bound, which helped the swelling but made typing difficult (of course I was back at work; Tax Day is just 2-1/2 weeks away, after all). I had to unwrap and rewrap it several times on Saturday to corral the swelling. The nurse had warned me that the whole thing would turn all sorts of purple and ugly and bruised-looking and probably go up my arm as the blood was reabsorbed. It doesn't seem to be spreading any higher than where my watchband would be, but my hand and fingers are now quite spectacularly colored. At one point my fingers were getting rather uncomforably swollen, but the rewrapping -- around the individual fingers, then on to the hand -- seemed to take care of that. I don't think I'll be wearing my wedding ring this week, though.
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No knitting on Friday or Saturday. My left hand was more of a paw than a hand equipped with an opposable thumb. Today, though, I started swatching for my next Dulaan sweater.
And in a few minutes I'm going to teach Matthew how to knit. Another muggle joins The Force!
