Friday the 13th (cue scary music)

Last week Browder started 1st grade (on Wed.) and Jeff also met my mom Wed. morning so she could get/keep Mal & G for the rest of the week so that I could accomplish things, sew, organize, etc. All was great until Fri. morning (Friday the 13th I might add). I took B to school and grabbed a Starbucks on my way home. I turned some music on and was sewing away! Starbucks + good music = get stuff done. 2 shirts down and on my 3rd, I had a little accident! It was a new design I had just bought that morning so I wasn't familiar with it. Anyway, you have to place fabric down and if you know which needle (out of 6) that is stitching, it is no problem. On this particular design it was sewing on needle 3 and it had a jump stitch in it so needle 4 came down... ON MY FINGER! It happened pretty fast and the next thing I saw was a broken needle left in the machine. This was at about 10:30 Fri morning. It hurt, but I think I was in shock! I immediately got on my Applique Cafe Facebook page and asked "HELP! blah blah blah needle in my finger, what do I do?". I also called Jeff and told him that I had just sewn my finger. I ran some water over it, maybe almost fainted? Jeff was on his way home and had talked to our Dr.'s nurse by the time he got home. We immediately loaded up and went to see my Dr. who's office is luckily about a mile from our house. This was around 11. They took me right back (surprisingly), he looked at it, they did an X-Ray immediately and after a couple of consultations with another Dr. in the group, he told me he basically would not touch this with a 10-foot pole! You know it's bad when you have 2 doctors in the room and they say "let us go talk again". They gave me a tetanus shot (which is still hurting 3 days later) and said they would call with further instruction when they heard back from the Orthopedic they had called. We left there at about 12:10 and Jeff took me home so I could go do carpool and he was supposed to play in a golf tournament at Wynlakes at 1:00. I couldn't miss carpool over a little needle, right?

Here is a picture - it does not look bad! The needle basically went in my fingernail and broke off. It didn't come through the other side, so it was just lodged in my finger underneath the nail bed!

After I picked up carpool my Dr. called and told me to go to the Jackson ER and the ortho Dr. was there and he would check it out. So I finished carpool, got me & B some lunch and dropped him off at a friend's house so he would not have to have the ER experience. Got to the ER and had to "check in" and sit with the lady who said she had a blood clot in her leg and the lady who thought she was having a miscarriage and was threatening to sue the hospital if she lost her baby. BTW I was taken back a good hour BEFORE blood clot lady!? I had told Jeff to go on and play golf and I would call him when I knew something and he could meet me if need be. Triage called me back, then back in the waiting room I went. Long story short, they called me back again, the baffled Physicians Assistant said she couldn't do anything and that I would have to wait on Dr. Hartzog (the ortho). By this time it was like 4:00. He later came in and informed me that he had looked at the X-ray and that they would be performing surgery on my finger to remove the needle. IV Sedation was mentioned and next thing I know another nurse is in there taking blood, armed with a hospital gown and the Anesthesiologist is asking me lots of questions because I had eaten a McDonalds Happy Meal at 1:00! When he started talking about being put to sleep and what happens if you throw up, I got a little freaked out! I called Jeff and told him "it was time"!! By the time he got down there I was in a hospital gown and shortly thereafter they put me on a gurney heading to pre-op! We passed 2 policemen with a guy in handcuffs (Friday night in the ER?). We sat in Pre-op for a WHILE, hence the pictures and Facebook posts. I finally got an IV in my arm and Dr. Hartzog initialed my finger so as to not cut on the wrong one!

I won't go in to the other interesting fellows in pre-op! Basically at about 7:00 they wheeled me in to the operating room and the last thing I remember is them moving me over to the operating room bed. I woke up in post-op at about 9:00 and was groggy and waking up until about 10. They brought Jeff back and got me dressed and he picked me up in the wheelchair in front of the hospital. I did throw up on the way home but slept good Fri night and was fine Saturday morning! Here is a picture Jeff took of me waiting...

Here is the finger Saturday morning. I think they used a whole roll of gauze. I took this off and am now down to just a bandaid on a stitch or 2 in my middle finger.

Needless to say, I had a very traumatic weekend!! One minute I'm sewing away and the next minute I sew my finger. Several hours later I am put to sleep with a tube down my throat in an operating room. I did finish the shirt I was working on when this happened, but other than that I have not turned my machine on. Mal & G came back yesterday so it's back to reality with 3 kids and I can hopefully get back to work this week! 

I read SO MANY comments on Facebook and it is amazing that this happens all the time to people who sew! Most people said they were able to "work the needle out". I hope this never happens again! I know I'm going to be cautious for a WHILE! Back to work (and REALITY - Mallory is awake!)