Things happened so fast and before I knew it I was bleeding. Quite badly. I rushed down to the kitchen and put my hand under the tap. The end of my finger almost completely flopped off and I suddenly knew I had to go to A&E right now.
⚠️ WARNING ⚠️
This post contains some graphic injury photos. Don’t look at them if you’re a little queasy about blood… You’ve been warned.
I showed Aimi and she sprung into action gathering up everything we needed and putting the dogs away. While she was running around I went and spoke with Jane, who was very shaken. Funnily enough, I go really calm whenever there is an injury or emergency.
We had only just been talking with the dogs milling around. Daito is always on a lead and George is always off lead. Nothing unusual as these two had met before. Daito is full size so towers over George when sniffing. And I have to say he was being very good with George just sniffing gently but for whatever reason one dog snapped at the other and then they were fighting.
My immediate concern was to separate them because Daito is much bigger, stronger and much younger than George. So I dove straight in and grappled Daito around the neck trying to pull them apart. Unluckily, in the process, the end of my ring finger was bitten almost completely off. I have no idea which dog did it and I’ve no blame for the dogs, they were just trying to bite each other, not me.
I grabbed an ice pack and the whole roll of kitchen towel, how long with my laptop bag. If I had a long wait in A&E, I wanted something that would at least keep me entertained or I could answer some emails to pass the time. But when I turned up in A&E it was almost completely empty. It must be because I was the first injury of the day. The nurse on reception took a few details and then came round to replace my bloody kitchen towels with something more professional. Without any waiting around, I was immediately shown into a hospital bay where a nurse started cleaning and looking at the wound. I was assessed by one specialist or another and told I would need an X-ray. Again, I was very quickly walked to that department and within a couple of minutes I was on the x-ray bed having my hand moved around under a great big machine.
You hear horror stories of how long people have to wait in A&E but in my experience I was straight in and dealt with as quickly as if I was the only person there.
The X-ray clearly showed the end of my finger bone was broken off and little pieces of bone left in there. The stabbing feeling that had started to come back, since they took away my ice pack, confirmed this. They threatened to take off my wedding ring with a Black and Decker, so I determinedly wiggled it free. Like the ring on a metal wire game, trying hard not to touch anything, lest my nose light up in alarm.
I was not going to have my finger fixed today. They would book an operation for tomorrow and call me that afternoon to let me know about it. I was admitted, assessed, cleaned, x-rayed, cleaned again, wrapped up, given penicillin and paracetamol and discharged all within 2 hours. I was home by 11:30 with a cup of tea, and a throbbing finger waiting for the call about the operation which duly came. Maybe I was just lucky, but honestly I was very impressed with the whole experience. I mean, partial amputation of your finger is no holiday, but if it was going to happen, the NHS emergency staff made it as pleasant as possible.
I doped myself up with co-codamol and the pain eased a little, but that afternoon, the dressing was fully saturated with blood. It was seeping out onto my shirt where it was strapped up above my heart. This couldn’t be right, so Aimi drove me to the Alton GP to have it re-dressed. This lasted the night until my operation the next day.
