Hodgepodge 307/365 - Fingers

The last of my insect Band-Aids, alas

I sliced my thumb this evening, cutting down a piece of peeled ginger in preparation for mincing. It wasn't bad, just a flap of skin, with the attendant semi-massive blood loss. But it reminded me of a time waaaaaay back when David and I lived in San Diego—that would've been 1979, 1980. David was slicing onions, and suddenly he screamed, Aaaaaaaaagggggghhhhhhh! Serious blood loss was happening, and it wasn't just a flap of skin: he'd sliced the top of his left pinky entirely off! The blood-curdling scream was because onion juice on raw nerves. I still shudder just to think about it.

We tried to recall the next chain of events, but yeah: almost forty years ago, it's vague. We think we called the hospital, and they said he'd need a plastic surgeon—which somehow we found, even though it was evening. He was instructed to pack the detached piece of finger in a saline solution. And off we rushed.

At the surgeon's office, he took a look and said, "Yeah, I think I can save that." Six or eight tiny stitches later, David was good to go. The doc even lined up the fingerprints!

David now has a circular scar (a halo) on that finger, and less sensitivity than in the other fingertips. But since he's a guitarist, and that's his fret hand, it's excellent that that tip was saved.

It was a minor injury, thank goodness.

When it comes to finger injuries, I always think of elite climber Tommy Caldwell, who lost most of his left index finger in a construction accident. It didn't stop him, though. Not by a long shot.

And of course there's a list on the Internet of famous people who are missing fingers! Among them:

• Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead: much of middle finger of pick-holding hand, lost in a wood-chopping accident
• Darryl Hannah (actress): middle finger again, the victim of a pulley on her grandmother's well
• Rahm Emmanuel (mayor of Chicago): middle finger again—a meat slicer ate it
• Jesse James (outlaw), according to legend
• James Doohan (Scotty on the original Star Trek): finger severed by one of six bullets that hit him on D-Day, Juno Beach, France
• Boris Yeltsin: lost two fingers playing with a hand grenade as a child
• Christian Bale (actor): mangled an index finger in a dirt bike accident
• Telly Savalas (star of the 1970s TV series Kojak): index finger, whether from a WWII grenade or a rat gnawing on him as a child only he knows for sure
• Buster Keaton: lost a finger in a clothes wringer at the age of 2
• Danny Thomas (actor and comedian): blew off a finger in a gun accident
• Frodo Baggins: had a finger torn off in Mordor by Gollum in the course of saving all of Middle Earth