Always use the safety, or you might lose your thumb

Always use the safety or you could cut off your thumb, like I did.

ok, ok, I didn’t cut off all of my thumb.

I just cut off part of it.

The side of my thumb.

Why?

“Because I woke up this morning and thought to myself, ‘Self, you know what we should do today?  Cut off part of my thumb.  Cause we haven’t done anything like that yet.'”

So that’s not how it happened.  I got a dehydrator and a mandolin.

And decided my first thing to fix with said dehydrator would be “dried apples.”  I was cautious.  I knew the blade was sharp, a dull blade would not work.  However while I was cautious and knew to be cautious, the apple did not listen.  So I’m slide apple, slice apple, slide apple, slice apple, slid….  apple sticks, slice thumb.

Me: Wow, that was probably not good.

Look at thumb, briefly see it’s DEEP, blood starts flowing.  Flooding.  My whole body starts tingling in pain, making me realize I just cut off some nerves.

Hold a cloth over my thumb, it doesn’t stop. In the bathroom I do a quick rinse and hold.  It doesn’t stop bleeding.  Through that spot on the washcloth.  Pull off and re-wrap.  Through that one.  Pull off, re-wrap.  Somewhere in 5 or 6th wrap I am starting to worry it’s never going to stop.  Another one or two I call my mom.  When I tried to cut my finger off (chopping frozen foodstuffs) it was the ice that stopped the pain and probably bleeding.  So I add an ice cube to the washcloth wrap and hold.  I sliced almost to the bone the previous time without going to the hospital so I refuse to go this time.

It takes well over 40 minutes to get it to finally slow enough that I can take off the wrap and quickly add a bandage and it not get instantly soaked.  It took 2 days before I could take off the bandage without having to have the new bandage ready to apply instantly.  So I didn’t get a picture then, but apparently I cut off skin, nerves and almost hit the muscle underneath.

But the first picture I took, was after it was a week old.  The scab is “beneath the skin” to explain how deep it is.

It took 3 weeks for the scab to come out (not off, it was still under the skin) and still there is a dead spot on the side of my thumb, about the size of a pencil eraser.

I don’t like that, but it’s better than going to the hospital or cutting off more of my thumb.

Good news is, that this horrible incident has become a lesson for all my friends on Facebook.

Always use the safety device as pictured on the mandolin comparison above.  You and the object you are slicing may have very different definitions of “being safe.”  And if your safety device does not hold fruit or vegetable, or is too small to slice anymore, get you some “cut and slash resistant gloves” and if you are as skilled as I am with sharp objects, you probably should have them ANYWAY.

And that boys and girls is how I cut off my own thumb…

MJ Schrader