Cup of Coffee

December 19, 2017: Clumsies Get Stitches

71 Comments

Sour Cream bit it in a snowbank and got some stitches on her lower lip last night. I got stitches three times in my life; she'll catch me with one more incident.

71 thoughts on “December 19, 2017: Clumsies Get Stitches”

  1. I got stitches three times in my life

    either you've died, or you're setting yourself up for a trip to the er.

  2. Hey, I got a baseball related one today:

    That's exactly as old as Manny Ramirez was the day he hit his 500th home run.

    I am a few home runs behind him.

  3. I have had sutures twice in my life, post-surgery. I have never had common stitches though. As a kid, my parents didn't really like doctors, so everything was just bandaged up and I have some weird scars from slow healing wounds. As an adult, I have followed suit. I sliced the tip of my finger off (careful when you slice eggplant) and reattached it with bandages. It took forever to heal right, but it stuck. I have also used super glue for tougher cuts. Works pretty good.

      1. I had post-dashboard-of-a-1980-Monte-Carlo stitches on the bridge of my nose that left a jagged scar, but nothing outside of that. I don't think I've even had any cuts that maybe should have been stitched up, so now I wonder if I've been too careful my whole life.

    2. I don't know if my parents didn't like doctors, but I surely didn't go often. They did have to relent when I got pushed and fell backwards into a metal door jamb, gnashing the back of my head pretty badly. That one needed 7 stitches.

      1. We lived two blocks away from the hospital. The two times I needed stitches for injury*, if we had lived further away, they might have stopped bleeding soon enough in transit.
        The first one was on my eyebrow**... I was watching TV on the little B&W in the basement above the bar. On a bar stool. Rocking back and forth, too far back and I overcorrected forward and hit my head on the square countertop corner of the bar top.
        The second one was on the back of my thigh... I backed into the snowblower while shovelling. Somehow I just got a big cut instead of like having my leg spread across the yard. My dad was quick to stop it, I guess. The jogging pants I was wearing were shredded.

        *I also had a sebaceous cyst removed from my forehead (glued IIRC), and several curious moles that turned out to be nothing but required one stitch each.
        **My sister SNF (nee SNR) also has a scar in her eyebrow... she deflected a pitch from my dad with her catcher's mitt and it hit her in the glasses. I think it just popped out the lens and sent the frame into her skin. Lucky she played softball rather than baseball, I guess.

    3. Two occasions for me thus far, both involving head injuries. The first was at daycare, where I (so I’m told) I jumped or bounced off a cushion into a cast iron radiator, winding up with a cut across the eyebrow. It’s faint, but you can still make it out. It being the era it was, I continued attending that daycare.

      The second was when I was T-boned out on Highway 61 by a Ford Expedition that ran a set of flashing red lights at 55mph. A couple more inches to the rear of where it impacted and I’d either not be here or dealing with severe ongoing health challenges. As it was, the worst of it was a gash across the back of my head and concussion-like symptoms, probably from hitting the driver’s window as the car spun around a few times. I walked away from a car that was two-thirds as wide in the front as it was pre-impact; even rusted-out old Volvos crash pretty well.

      1. Before I knew him,* my best man was T-boned by a drunk driver as he pulled onto Hwy 241 in St. Michael. It was after work at a video store (late afternoon), and they were in town, but the guy was already at speed and totaled my buddy's F-150 (bent the chassis), leaving him with long scars along the side of his head. Older F-150's take a crash pretty well too, eh?

        We used to tell people who asked about our scars that we were separated at birth - I have noticeable scars across the back of my head from a tumor removal**.

        *I met him at 18, this happened a year-and-a-half earlier.
        ** see below.

        1. Last time I needed medical attention...so there I was, minding my own business when CoC's team swerves in out of nowhere and tears me a new one in the first round of the playoffs.
          I remember it like it was yesterday.

          1. Usually payback is a long(er) time coming. I seem to recall getting "Gostkowski'd" last Monday night after taking a flyer on McCown and his consecutive 30+ point performances the previous two weeks, only to see him post a -3 after leaving the game with a season-ending injury.

    4. I've had two set of stitches outside of surgery, both before I was 5. One, I stood up in my high chair and home and bit through my lower lip. The second was from standing on the swing set teeter totter and catching the top of my head where it connected to the top bar. Since then, everything has been minor-ish (I fell into a moving walkway in the airport and tore up my stomach, and broke a collar bone).

      The first time my brother had to get stitches, he was terrified. My mom was very into sewing, so he expected to doctor to take a sewing machine to him...

      1. The Boy got a nasty puncture wound in his eyebrow at about 12-13 months. Had to be strapped down from stitches and screamed bloody murder throughout. One of my worst memories. But I sold the scar as a Harry Potter thing when he got older.

          1. CER's first would-be stitches (butterfly bandages) came when she snuck my pocketknife and decided to whittle in her room. On Easter.
            We decided that since I wasn't going to be locking up knives, we'd start the next kids earlier on learning how to use them responsibly. She got her first pocketknife (Victorinox Classic) when she turned 10, HPR earlier.

  4. Six.

    Eyebrow: 2 stitches, jumping off a bed, similar to CH, age unknown.
    Ankle: 4 stitches, sharp metal rim of a barrel I was riding like a cowboy when 5.
    Knee: 6 stitches, jumping into one of the small inflatable pools and caught the plug in the bottom at the wrong angle. I was about 8.
    Right hand, between thumb and index finger: 5 stitches, carving pumpkins, age >10.
    Heel of left hand: 5 stitches, trying to pull a utility knife blade out of a package it was stuck in. 16 or 17.
    Forehead: 3 stitches (2 sites), hit myself in the head with the claw end of a hammer trying to pull siding off of a house. The day after I got the ones in my left hand. (Best part: between when my hand and my head happened, my sister also had to get stitches after she ran, in the dark, into a mailbox post (but without a mailbox))(Actual best part: I don't recall for sure which, but either T.J. Stiles' father or brother put the stitches in my head.).

    I also once got 2nd degree burns from getting hit in the head with a baseball (indirectly). But that's a different topic.

      1. I also once fell asleep at the wheel and went into the ditch and when I got to the job site (I was roofing at the time), I discovered a 4 ft gash in the top of the van... I think I hit a sign and it flew up and sliced the vehicle?

  5. One non-surgical event ("common stitches"). Got kicked in the face tackling a guy in a h.s. football game at Winona, gouging me between lip and chin. Rogue-ish charm.

  7. **
    1 surgical event - When I was two, I had a benign tumor removed from the back of my head. Head was the size of a small melon, tumor was (reportedly) the size of an orange. I don't really remember the surgery, but I do remember ice cream afterwards and I have a framed photo and newspaper clipping from my time at Children's with Tommy Kramer-backup, Steve Dils. If I recall correctly, in the photo, I'm wearing a 'helmet' made of white bandages with Dils pointing out how to play Ms. Pac Man on an Atari console.

    'Spoiler' SelectShow

    -Received stitches to repair a thumb sliced open by the lid of a 5-gallon tin of hot fudge that someone had not properly disposed of (high school DQ employee). You could see the tendon, but fortunately, it was not severed.
    -Received liquid 'stitches' to repair a pinky-finger sliced open by the lid of 5-gallon tin of pepperoncini that I had trouble opening with the industrial can opener (college Ciatti's employee). It healed funny, so the finger prints the Navy has on file don't include the current, misaligned swirls and curves.
    -Received a suture made of duct tape* to secure a slice on the top/back of the tendon-exposed thumb. Was qualifying with the M9 and received a 'Beretta bite' at the range. Didn't keep my shooting hand thumb low enough, and the slide cut cleanly across it during recoil. One of my cleaner scars.

    Injuries which should have resulted in stitches, but didn't, include a forehead gash from a dropped 'tent pole' (i.e., small tree trunk - buddy let slip the 'pole' after his older brother shot him in the a** with a BB gun), gashed chin from snowboarding ... when I thought terrain parks were a good idea, cleated hand during h.s. football, and a hand shredded during repairs to my destroyer's stores cargo elevator.

    *Navy Corpsman are nothing if not resourceful.

    1. Wow, exposed tendon? Sounds like a pretty serious case of slide bite. Did Doc give you some Marine candy Motrin?

      Let’s keep you away from the 5-gallon cans.

      1. Let’s keep you away from the 5-gallon cans.

        Yup, this was my thought.
        Also this:

        I'm grateful to know you ... can't believe you survived to adulthood.

      2. He did, but also, I didn't convey that clearly. It was on the back of the thumb which had been sliced by the hot fudge can, so one on the inside of the joint, the other on the 'top' by the knuckle.

        another correction ... 5-quart, not 5-gallon ... that'd be a lotta hot fudge and pepperoncini.

    2. Vaguely apropos, one night early in 7th grade I walked into the living room to show my parents this hard lump on top of my left foot, just above the toes. It was about the size of a large marble and felt hard like bone.

      I remember my mom getting pretty quiet and kind of pale, and they took me to see the doctor the next day or soon thereafter. I had surgery soon after to remove it. Turns out that it was a lump of cartilage (or so I recall).

      Anyway, what was the big deal? Well, when I was a baby, my slightly older sister died of leukemia. I am sure in retrospect that my parents did not sleep much that night after I told them. The inch-plus scar is a reminder.

  8. One of the great things about running my own office is that I get to order the supplies that I want. New pens FTW!

    2. Our office guy is in his 70s and has been about to retire for about five years running now. He has never once refused (or even questioned) a request of mine, no matter how impractical. I'm gonna miss that guy when he finally does go.

    3. I've requested and received green-ink pens. Being limited to three colors was hampering me. (I don't use highlighter, but different color inks for impact). I have one purple-ink pen, but it's on reserve.
      One of the reasons I need pocketed button-down shirts... I bring all four pens to meetings.

      I also had a period there where I was somehow ruining a mouse every month.

      1. I also have an affinity for different ink colors--particularly green and purple. However, I've completely given up on our official office supplies for any sort of writing utensil; it's all awful. I buy my own pens.

        1. I also order my own pens (Staples doesn't carry them on the shelf) and have for a long time - Rolling Writer Pentel Pens.

        2. I have switched to using purple and green pens almost exclusively at this point. I started using them to grade papers instead of the Dreaded Red Pen. Grading is now about the only time I actually write something down instead of typing it, so I stopped carrying around the black pens I used to have with me.

          1. I had no idea there were others out there who specifically like purple and green pens. This place is truly the world's greatest!

              2. Those pens look pretty good. I usually go for Gelly Roll, but anything that is non-ballpoint, relatively fine-tipped, and writes smoothly (and of course comes in the correct colors) would be acceptable.

            2. Up until the day I quit smoking, I had a pack-a-day Newport 100s habit. When I announced to my friend Jon that I was quitting, he got me a cache of green pens to chew on to fulfill the oral fixation. I came to equate green pens with the endorphin release I'd previously gotten from smoking, so all these years later, I would never consider using green pens again.

                  1. I presume it was about this??

                    A 1998 Massachusetts Department of Public Health report indicated that Newports alongside unfiltered Camel cigarettes contained the highest levels of nicotine in cigarettes on the market. In the following six years, Lorillard Tobacco increased the amount of nicotine in Newports by 10%.

                1. It might be more maroon. It's not pure pink, that's for sure. But it's close enough for me to call it that.

    4. I do not purchase, or bring in, nice pens for my work, since I work in an industry where pens disappear on an hourly basis. I buy cheap pens, as they are never around long enough to justify their purchase.

      1. Yeah, after going from service to an office, it took me awhile to stop hoarding pens. I was used to them just falling down a black hole for so long.

    5. I like the official office supply pens at work quite a bit, actually. Several years ago they switched from Sharpies & Expo white board markers to a generic alternative which are not nearly as good, so I bring my own of those in.

  9. Sentences you don't read every day: "Martin Perez suffered broken radial head in non-pitching elbow in incident with a bull."

  10. When I had my appendectomy a few years ago, they had to do the old fashioned scalpel kind instead of a laparoscopy because it ruptured. I got one stitch on a two inch or so incision, had to replace the packing twice, but the scar is damn near invisible.

    1. My rupture didn’t go as well, they put a couple strings(?) in and used those to close the opening a while after surgery. Still have a huge scar from it.

    2. I'll believe it only when it's officially announced, but I can't remember the Twins ever being considered a landing spot for a top free agent like Darvish. It wasn't that long ago that the Twins wouldn't even go after the second tier of free agents like Ervin Santana or even that guy we dumped on the Angels (I can't remember his name right now and I really don't want to).

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