Saturday 2 May 2020

Sometimes I am Truly Blessed

Well,, I'm really annoyed - only partly with myself. I have cut the back of my right hand and I really don't know how it happened. I have done a lot of physical work in the last 9.5 years and suddenly out of nowhere I have hurt myself. When I did my entire house over two years I only got a single injury, by rushing to find my phone when it rang; I slipped and hit my right knee on the newel post, which brought on a bout of housemaid's knee... Since then I have done lots more work on the local church, all without injury until a couple of days ago.

Let me tell you what happened: the church has had a new wooden floor put in and fixing the old tiles which are right alongside the new floor was not in the contract, so Muggins here gets the task (as always) of making good the little gap. Naturally, in some places the repair had to be more than a single tile as things like that always get loosened by, in one case, a friend who simply "forgot" that he MUST NOT TREAD NEAR THE EDGE!

I was using a 4.5 inch grinder on some Victorian floor tiles to get them to fit. You have to remove any grouting around the edge and make sure that it fits properly. I had done loads of those, and then had to sort out a few small pieces to insert into the floor. Where there is a triangular corner piece (with the two shorter sides at 2 inches), and the adjacent tiles are still well attached, you don't really have any choice unless you want to relay the entire floor: I am using an adhesive to fit tiles like that, but the issue was that the piece of tile was too thick. Solution: grind a small amount (5 mm, perhaps) off the underside of the tile.

Thus, well knowing the dangers of this job, I found a piece of 6" wood and clamped the piece of tile to it, using a G-clamp. I could then put a foot on the piece of wood (because my workmate is in the church and I was at home) and safely grind away the necessary, with two hands on the grinder. Gloves on, goggles on, what could go wrong?

So I was happily doing this when it all did go wrong. I think the grinding wheel touched the G-clamp which caused the grinder itself to be twisted in my hands and somehow hit the BACK of my right hand which had been holding the side handle. My left hand was still holding the main body of the grinder and I threw it away, just as I noticed the blood literally pouring through the glove. I left a bloody trail into the kitchen and staunched the flow with cold water and kitchen towel.

The resulting cut was about 2cm long, on the back of the base of my right thumb, about 5cm below the edge of the bit of skin between thumb and forefinger. Have a look at your own hand and see if you can identify the main tendon on the back which operates your thumb. Well, the end of the cut was at right angles to the tendon and about 5mm from it - yes, less than 0.25 of an inch!  Near the left end of the cut there was another tendon less that 10mm from the cut.

Google tells me that these tendons are called the extensor pollicis longus and the extensor pollicis brevis, and it is a complete mystery to me how they are still in one piece. Somehow I had let a grinding disc attack my hand and go right through all the skin layers at right angles BETWEEN two most important tendons! As the doctor at A&E said as she inserted four stitches, "You are very lucky" - or perhaps Someone is looking after me?

A week later I had the stitches out and two days later you can hardly see the scar.