Today, being Monday was a day off and I was very glad to have it off as I had two 13 hour days this weekend needed the rest today. The plan was to can pears today. To can them and make pear butter. We thought it would be a 3-4 hours job with the two of us and 3 kids helping. Yeah We wish! Canning time was probably 7-8 hours but the day was a bit longer. Why? well the trip to the doctors for stitches kind of added a little time to our day and then losing me due to the stitches not being able to get wet and having no gloves to keep them dry... yup you read right stitches! I sliced my right thumb and when it was still basically gushing blood after five minutes decided to go see my doctor. Felt rather silly (not to mention stupid...note a dull knife will cut you without a doubt) going in for a cut but when they saw it and it was still bleeding (not gushing) 30 minutes after the cut I realized I wasn't silly. When the doctor came in looked at it and said yeah 3-4 stitches should do it I was like oh my! Uh... Doc? I am a dishwasher...keep it dry you can work. So I will be a one gloved wonder at work the next ten days. He was one of the few doctors I hadn't seen at the clinic I go to but I liked him. He was very honest. He said I can do this two ways both will hurt one doesn't hurt less but one may work better which do you want the single shot in the thumb to numb the whole thing or several shot just around the cut to numb that area? I said whichever one you think is best but I have no problem with several shots if that will target better the area and keep the stitches from hurting. So several shots it was after a soak in the iodine bath and rub down with alcohol that got things cleaned up but bleeding again. That first shot hurt like the dickens but then the shots got to hurt less and less till finally I didn't feel them at all. Or my thumb for that matter. Weird feeling that to not feel your thumb. The first stitch I didn't watch but the rest I did as we casually chatted I was amazed that I felt nothing. Not even pressure it was like watching a doll get stitched up! These were the first stitches I was awake for since I was a baby and got a stitch in my head. So here are some pictures some from my camera, some from my phone.
So here is the sliced thumb... doesn't look too bad does it?
the iodine bath...
and all stitched up! Not sure why my camera was focusing beyond my thumb but...
hopefully I can get a better picture of the thumb tomorrow but at any rate there were not 3 or 4 stitches but 5 put in. Guess I really did need to go get it stitched up.
While the pears may have scored 5 stitches we scored 36 jars of canned pears, pear butter, and pear honey and got to have a bunch of fun doing it too! Pictures of the actual canning process will be coming in the near future and...
I guess I will continue the teasing and say soon the rest of the pictures will be posted on here!
